The Perfect Candidate is full of mystery and intrigue, and I frequently found myself unable to put it down and get anything done. I loved the pacing of the story, and the story hooked me from page one. The only thing I wish was different is that it was over far too soon!

I read this a long time ago, and I forgot to give a review. This book left me breathless, and on my toes during the whole reading experience. I recommend this to anyone wanting to escape their own reality for awhile in favor of an edgy young adult suspense novel.

The plot of this book wasn't especially surprising. The interpersonal relationships, secrets, and bids for power were solidly woven. But the political corruption elements were pretty predictable. We don't really get as close to the characters, emotionally, as we might have liked. Interesting for a one-off read but probably won't hold up on repeat.

(I ended up reading a finished copy from my library)
I first wanted to read this book, because it's about an intern in Washinton D.C. and with how I've become invested in elections and what politicians are doing in the past two years, I wanted to read a book that covered that as well.
The Perfect Candidate did not disappoint. Cameron Carter lives in a small town in California and works in his free time at his dad's landscaping business. After his high school graduation and before he starts going to the local community college, he's decided to try and intern for his local congressman nicknamed BIB. He shockingly gets the internship and goes to Washington for the summer. While there he makes friends with the other interns and staff and gets sucked into a mission of sorts after one of the interns mysteriously dies.

Overall I loved this story. Cameron is a very realistic character, he struggles with balancing his life back in California and keeping in touch with friends, while also fully immersing himself in what is happening for him this summer in Washington. Things got even more complicated for him the longer he was in Washington as he got sucked into helping find out something that changed hundreds of people lives once it was made public. The mystery of what happened to the fellow staffer was fascinating to me and was dealt with in a real way, where people think about it for a few days and then it goes on the back burner and hardly ever gets mentioned again.
For me, this book was very realistic when it came to how people deal with loss, as well as trying to balance out the two different lives we can live at the same time. Cameron was a character that I truly did like, and he was smart and dumb at the same time just like a real person. He never had all of the answers and he trusted people he shouldn't have at times and confided in people that were good at other times. I cannot give this book enough praise and I can't wait to see what the author writes next.

P.S. To Mr. Stone does that ending mean we are going to get more of these characters? I sure hope so because I adored them.

Great mystery for young adults!
Thanks to NetGalley, Edelweiss and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read and review The Perfect Candidate by Peter Stone!
Cameron travels to Washington D.C. to begin an internship under Congressman Beck. Soon after arriving, one of the other Congressman’s workers (Ariel) dies in a drunk driving accident. An FBI agent approaches Cameron for help proving that the Congressman is corrupt. He digs a bit and finds a link to someone that knew Ariel. That leads to Cameron being pulled deeper and deeper into the mystery. I enjoy the characters and Cameron is a good guy trying to figure out his path in life and he and Lena are fun together. Cameron’s roommates and fellow interns make me laugh and I enjoyed reading this entire book. The ending was awesome in more ways than one! I’m looking forward to other books by Peter Stone. 5 stars for an engaging young adult mystery!

DNF - Could not relate to the characters or invest in the plot. Will not publish publically. It seemed very formulaic.

Cameron Carter lives in a small California town, but when he gets the opportunity to be an intern for a Congressman in Washington D.C., he jumps at the chance. However, there is more to his internship than he bargains for when a staffer named Ariel enlists his help to uncover a murder that happened six years earlier. When Ariel dies in a car accident, Cameron is the only one left to bring the murderer to justice. If he can survive...
I loved this book! The suspense and mystery was engaging, the characters were realistic, and sometimes this book was just plain funny. There was a perfect balance of danger and humor, and Cameron's relationship with Lena was sweet and substantive. I didn't care for the profanity, but it was surprisingly mild compared to fiction these days. I was very happy with the ending and I hope there is a sequel coming. I can't wait! I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for an entertaining, well written, suspenseful novel.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. A positive review was not required, and all opinions expressed are entirely my own.

The Perfect Candidate is a murder mystery set against the backdrop of politics of Washington D.C., and has a newcomer to the city, Cameron Carter, as the protagonist. Cameron becomes a congressional intern, following the footsteps of his mother, and is eager to soak in the vibe of a busy city, so different from his small town, and for the chance to make a difference. On his first week there, Alice takes him under her wing; she turns up dead next week, and then he is lured into an investigation for her murder and the conspiracy behind it. Seeking to get justice for her, as well as the carrot dangled in front of him by the agent who recruits him, he starts to help out the investigation.

The book has a good plot, and some interesting set of characters, but overall, I would say it doesn't do justice to both. The writing fails to build the atmosphere of intrigue, mystery and threat that you would expect from a thriller, nor does it sufficiently emphasize the political nature of this particular conspiracy. For the most part, Cameron is not really under any threat, so it doesn't even have great stakes to begin with; there is perhaps only one part towards the end that really gets your pulse racing with anxiety. The identity of the murderer was predictable, if you follow mystery novel tropes, so it wasn't entirely a surprise, but I found it weird that they were being sort of redeemed in one letter in the end? And the other secondary characters don't make much of dent, despite being interesting personalities, because they are tragically underused and only occasionally flit into Cameron's sphere, and I include his love interest in this. Cameron himself feels like a passive protagonist, and I questioned why him - spoiler, it isn't until the epilogue that it truly makes sense!

Overall, it is an okay story, but could have done with better writing.

SALT LAKE CITY — BYU alumnus Peter Stone was always more interested in politics than writing, until best-selling author Margaret Stohl approached him at his wedding and said he had a book in him.

Stohl, who lives part time in Park City, based this opinion off the speech Stone had just given to his wife at his wedding reception. At the time, Stone dismissed Stohl's compliment as exaggerated flattery, perhaps brought on by the romantic atmosphere of his nuptials. But, as he continued to meet Stohl throughout the next few months, she kept asking when he was going to write a book. So, finally, Stone decided to give it a try.

"I would have never seen this potential in myself or taken myself seriously had she not done it first," he said.

When Stone tried to come up with an idea for a book, he remembered his Washington, D.C., internship with California Congressman Gary Condit as "one of the most vivid chapters" of his life. So he pulled from these experiences to write his debut young adult spy novel, "The Perfect Candidate" (Simon & Schuster, 384 pages, ages 12 and up), which hits shelves Oct. 2.

"The Perfect Candidate" tells the story of Cameron Carter, who leaves behind his inland California town to intern in Washington, D.C., for his congressman, who's expected to be the next speaker of the House.

Cameron anticipates this internship will propel his career out of his small hometown, but instead he gets wrapped up in a scandal involving murder and corruption. Putting his own life in danger, Cameron strives to solve a mystery that will upend everything he thought he knew about American politics before the summer ends.

Stone loosely based "The Perfect Candidate" on Condit's real-life scandal with Chandra Levy, a 24-year-old D.C. intern from Stone's California hometown. In the summer of 2001, Levy was found dead near a D.C. running trail and it quickly became clear that her death was not an accident. As authorities looked into her relationships they discovered evidence that indicated she and Condit were having an affair, thus placing Condit under suspicion. Condit firmly denied having any involvement with Levy's death, and Stone said he's inclined to believe him, but still the experience was disillusioning for him.

"Gary Condit was a hero of mine for many years," Stone said. "Someone that you have such confidence in and such respect for, who is then cast in a very negative light by the media — you get to a point where you don't know what to believe and you start to question your own confidence."

This negative experience is also part of why Stone has since left politics and is now a marketing executive for Netflix, currently based out of Tokyo. After earning his bachelor's degree in political science from Brigham Young University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, Stone switched from political campaigns to marketing campaigns for television and film in Los Angeles.

"I feel like politics and Hollywood are sister industries," he said. "Political campaigns are not that unlike campaigns for movies. You are getting people to show up for something that happens on a particular day; you are up against competition. To me, it's that bootstrapping and entrepreneurial spirit that is the same for both."

Stone even included an oft-quoted platitude in his book that Washington, D.C., is "Hollywood for the ugly," where politicians are the celebrities.

"That's what I love about D.C., is that it is such a youthful city with people who are trying to change the world," he said. "There's this hum and energy and electricity that I just found to be so exciting."

It's the contrast of a city filled with people who are trying to improve the country, sometimes at the expense of their own morals, that is the theme behind "The Perfect Candidate."

The book is coming out at a unique time in politics, Stone said, when parties are deeply divided and emotionally charged, and polarizing issues are getting young people more involved. He hopes "The Perfect Candidate" will inspire young adults to learn more about how they can make a difference in the country.

"As disillusioning as government may seem, there are really exciting ways to get involved," he said, "whether it's political campaigns or with your congressman or maybe even spending some time in the nation's capital. It's exciting and it'll change your life."

DNF at 55 pages, including the ending
I truly hate to give books one star reviews, but sadly, I'm not the audience for this book at all. I don't like politics, don't follow it and never got interested in it through the book. This book was not engaging for me at all and it was a struggle to read those 55 pages. The main reasons why I didn't finish this book are: a very dry main character that has no personality that I can't root for or connect to, the first person POV is vastly underused in this novel (no inner thoughts or deeper details to get to know the main character), a really awful female side character, normal cliches of politics and the murder mystery plot was something I didn't care about. The girl who gets murdered wasn't in the novel enough for me to care that she died. If you're not into politics, you might not like this.

Cameron Carter is excited to be chosen as an intern in the office of Congressman Billy Beck in Washington, DC. He's glad to get out of his small California town and work for a man he really admires. He's sort of a fish out of water but eager and bright. He is befriended by Ariel Lancaster, supervisor of the interns and daughter of a freshman Congresswoman who is an ally of Beck's.

Ariel says she has something to tell Cameron and that she needs his help with something, but before she can provide details, she dies in a car accident. It doesn't take long for Cameron to become suspicious especially when he is contacted by a man named Memo Adair who says he's with the FBI and investigating Beck. While Cameron is more concerned with Ariel's death, he still gets involved in the investigation.

He's also met Lena who is the daughter of the Mexican ambassador and an old Washington hand. They start what they both know is a summer romance. After all, she's on her way to Princeton and he's on his way to his local community college. The two of them tour many Washington sites and become good friends. In fact, when Cameron has to pick someone to hold the information he's gathered in case something happens to him, he chooses Lena. She also turns out to be a pretty good computer hacker too.

This story was filled with lots of excitement as Cameron investigates a man he admires and finds out that he's not the hero Cameron believed. There was lots of Washington politics and secrets and people who were sucked into things they should have been involved with.

Fans of politics, suspense, and a dash of romance will enjoy this fast-paced story. The surprise twist at the end could lead to more adventures for Cameron too.

The Perfect Candidate is a thrilling suspenseful read that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end. Stone has written a heart-pounding story that does not disappoint

The Perfect Candidate was a good book for kids grade 6-9 who enjoy politics and murder mystery stories. The main character, Carter, struggles with keeping his small-town roots in the buzzing capitol of Washington DC. The book reads to a middle-grade to early high school audience, but the content kind of requires a basic understanding of US Government, so it is a fine line to walk in concerns to the audience. I enjoyed his relationship with the Mexican Ambassador's daughter, as it was light hearted and fun. The unfolding of the actual mystery seemed a bit too convenient for my taste, but it was still a fun book to read.

With “The Perfect Candidate,” Peter Stone delivers today’s YA audience a timely and taut political thriller that exceeds expectations for suspense and storyline. Fresh out of High School, Cameron Carter exits his small-town California home and arrives in DC as an intern under his district’s Congressman. Readers are swiftly initiated into the scope of our Capital’s landscape as Cam navigates the newness of office politics, social strata ladders and DCs iconic geography,. The tragic death of fellow intern triggers far more than shock and grief. Cam, contacted by an FBI agent, reluctantly accepts an undercover assignment to investigate a potential conspiracy. Fueled with stunning plot twists, “The Perfect Candidate” is fast-paced, filled with a diverse cast of characters, and energized by an innocent romance. Underage drinking and sexual harassment headlines, however, should be weighed as potential markers before matching this book with younger teens. Reluctant readers will appreciate the rapid progression of the novel, but may experience potential setbacks due to Stone’s somewhat blurry secondary characters and deterring selection of Nadia and Nani as names of two different characters. This debut novel, and ideal “book-alike” for “Zero Day” by Jan Gangsei, establishes Peter Stone as a formidable force in the YA arena. Stone’s final riveting final chapter will stun his constituent readers and is certain to inspire vote for subsequent works or potential sequel. ~Netgalley ARC ~ Review by Lisa Brennan, Middle School Librarian @noveltalk