The Perfect Candidate by Peter Stone | Book Review

Title: The Perfect Candidate
Author: Peter Stone
Publisher: October 2nd, 2018
Published Date: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Genre: Mystery, YA, Thriller
Page Count:384
Format: Kindle

My Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Goodreads Summary: 
From debut author Peter Stone comes a heart-stopping, pulse-pounding political thriller that’s perfect for fans of Ally Carter and House of Cards.

When recent high school graduate Cameron Carter lands an internship with Congressman Billy Beck in Washington, DC, he thinks it is his ticket out of small town captivity. What he lacks in connections and Beltway polish he makes up in smarts, and he soon finds a friend and mentor in fellow staffer Ariel Lancaster.

That is, until she winds up dead.

As rumors and accusations about her death fly around Capitol Hill, Cameron’s low profile makes him the perfect candidate for an FBI investigation that he wants no part of. Before he knows it—and with his family’s future at stake—he discovers DC’s darkest secrets as he races to expose a deadly conspiracy.

If it doesn’t get him killed first.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

 My Review:

"It’s the presidents, the Hancocks, the loud ones who get noticed. No one pays attention to the people in the background."

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.

"If you’ve learned something so far this summer, I hope it’s that people win government contracts for all kinds of reasons."

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.

“You’re an intern who is going to make history,” he said. “I’ll settle for an intern who saves his dad’s business,”

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.