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Carpool Lane #1
Carpool to Christmas
A sweet, funny holiday romance full of love, friendship and family that'll leave you smiling.
Shy, creative high school junior Quinn Hughes has always been happy following in her bubbly, brilliant older sister Cricket’s footsteps in everything from speech and track to AP classes, dance committees and carpool. But this year, Cricket's at college and Quinn’s joyful life is falling apart. She can’t seem to shine without her helicopter sister leading the way. By Thanksgiving, Quinn is friendless, has an F in history, tanked the Varsity speech tournament, and fell asleep at a stoplight after an all-night study session, putting her driving privileges on probation. Worst of all, Quinn’s given up on herself and is quitting Winter Formal design committee, the one activity where she truly shines on her own merit.
Quinn’s parents are anything but happy and threaten a family “intervention" vacation to Cancun over winter break to get Quinn back on track. But that would ruin older sister Cricket’s winter ski trip with friends, so she plots to fix Quinn’s life from college, secretly hiring oddball neighbor Jesse Winer to be Quinn’s friend and winter-season wingman. Jesse's mission: Get Quinn to succeed at being holiday awesome—and to come out of her room—before the Cancun intervention becomes unavoidable. Jesse is a sweet, goofy, romantic wanna-be symphony conductor who’s secretly obsessed with composing a melodic waltz inspired by his crush—Quinn. So, he jumps at Cricket's offer.
And it works! Quinn and Jesse's friendship blooms, and Quinn steps into her own. She designs the utterly fabulous winter-formal dance and enjoys Christmas-season fun just like every other year. But when Quinn finds out Cricket paid Jesse to be her friend, it's any elf's guess if Quinn will be brave enough to keep sparkling and find Christmas love where she least expects it.
Shy, creative high school junior Quinn Hughes has always been happy following in her bubbly, brilliant older sister Cricket’s footsteps in everything from speech and track to AP classes, dance committees and carpool. But this year, Cricket's at college and Quinn’s joyful life is falling apart. She can’t seem to shine without her helicopter sister leading the way. By Thanksgiving, Quinn is friendless, has an F in history, tanked the Varsity speech tournament, and fell asleep at a stoplight after an all-night study session, putting her driving privileges on probation. Worst of all, Quinn’s given up on herself and is quitting Winter Formal design committee, the one activity where she truly shines on her own merit.
Quinn’s parents are anything but happy and threaten a family “intervention" vacation to Cancun over winter break to get Quinn back on track. But that would ruin older sister Cricket’s winter ski trip with friends, so she plots to fix Quinn’s life from college, secretly hiring oddball neighbor Jesse Winer to be Quinn’s friend and winter-season wingman. Jesse's mission: Get Quinn to succeed at being holiday awesome—and to come out of her room—before the Cancun intervention becomes unavoidable. Jesse is a sweet, goofy, romantic wanna-be symphony conductor who’s secretly obsessed with composing a melodic waltz inspired by his crush—Quinn. So, he jumps at Cricket's offer.
And it works! Quinn and Jesse's friendship blooms, and Quinn steps into her own. She designs the utterly fabulous winter-formal dance and enjoys Christmas-season fun just like every other year. But when Quinn finds out Cricket paid Jesse to be her friend, it's any elf's guess if Quinn will be brave enough to keep sparkling and find Christmas love where she least expects it.
- GenresYoung AdultHoliday
244 pages, Paperback
First published December 8, 2022
26 people are currently reading
44 people want to read
About the author
Nicole Schubert
7 books63 followersNicole Schubert is an award-winning author and screenwriter with a big soft spot for anything YA/teens, comedy and romance. Her debut YA novel, Blues Harp Green (2017), won an Independent Publishers Book Award and a Readers' Favorite Award in YA Social Issues. Her second book is a YA romcom, Saoirse Berger's Bookish Lens In La La Land (2021), drawing on her time working in Hollywood in film editing. Nicole also loves the heavy stuff and recently wrote the Lifetime Movies/Mar Vista Entertainment thriller Deadly Assistant (2019).
Nicole dabbles in other behind-the-scenes activities as well, like producing the monthly Improv Diary Show at Santa Monica’s Westside Comedy Theater. She’s produced a music awards TV show and European-wide photo exhibition out of Brussels and enjoyed another side of storytelling working in the editing rooms of numerous Hollywood feature films.
Nicole lives with her family in Santa Monica, by way of Brussels and New Orleans, where she was born during a hurricane.
Say hi to Nicole on the socials:
https://www.instagram.com/nicoleschub...
https://twitter.com/happypixiedo
https://www.bookbub.com/profile/nicol...
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-sc...
Nicole dabbles in other behind-the-scenes activities as well, like producing the monthly Improv Diary Show at Santa Monica’s Westside Comedy Theater. She’s produced a music awards TV show and European-wide photo exhibition out of Brussels and enjoyed another side of storytelling working in the editing rooms of numerous Hollywood feature films.
Nicole lives with her family in Santa Monica, by way of Brussels and New Orleans, where she was born during a hurricane.
Say hi to Nicole on the socials:
https://www.instagram.com/nicoleschub...
https://twitter.com/happypixiedo
https://www.bookbub.com/profile/nicol...
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-sc...
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 7, 2026
Do I think Carpool to Christmas is a super well-written novel that will someday become a classic?
No. Not at all.
But did I enjoy reading it?
Surprisingly, yes!
First things first: the book description literally tells you 90% of the plot. Overall the story is a little predictable.
But! That doesn't mean it isn't worth reading.
Quinn Hughes is a creative high school junior who apparently can't survive unless her sister Cricket is there to tell her how to live her life. When Cricket goes away to college, Quinn falls apart and becomes completely incapable of doing anything by herself. Quinn's absurdly obnoxious and nosy helicopter parents threaten to drag the girls to the beach for Christmas if Quinn doesn't pull herself together. So Cricket bribes Quinn's incredibly weird neighbor Jesse Winer to be Quinn's (only) friend and her #1 supporter (so basically, replacement Cricket). Of course, after all of Cricket's twisted plots to fix Quinn's life work, about 90% of the way through the book Quinn discovers Cricket's scheme and has a meltdown. No spoilers for the ending...but you can probably guess how it ends.
But. Even though the plot wasn't the best, I still enjoyed reading it! Here are some reasons why:
The characters! Specifically Jesse. He was actually hilarious! He was super weird and funny and sweet and I really enjoyed reading the scenes he was in. I cannot emphasize just how weird he was, though. For example, he has a crush on Quinn (why? She has almost no personality!) and he wants to create a symphony inspired by her. So when Quinn throws her homemade lemon-spice bars into a bush, (why, you ask? because she makes terrible decisions, that's why.) Jesse rescues them from the bush and takes them home. Then he proceeds to eat all of them, keep the dish, and TIE A STRING TO IT AND HANG IT FROM HIS CEILING ALONG WITH A WHISK AND A NAPKIN LIKE A LITTLE MOBILE AND CALL IT "INSPIRATION FOR HIS SYMPHONY"
This is how he responds when Cricket sees the mobile and is understandably weirded out by it:
"It's my inspiration right now." Jesse declared, looking up at the dish from the floor. "For a symphony. The sweet and the spice and the warm, cozy autumn smells and the vibe. And Quinn with her auburn hair like fire." ... "Don't worry, I'll get the dish back to you guys soon." he assured Cricket. "I got photos. Not the same, but good enough."
I'm not going to lie, I was laughing hysterically for a solid minute after I read this. Mostly because of how unexpected it was.
But as the novel went on, I realized this was actually quite in character for Jesse. Here's another part that Jesse thought that made laugh:
"His mom said that when people criticise, it's because they're insecure and has nothing to do with you, like when his sister Audrey installed padded insulation on her wall to shut out his piano playing and refused to acknowledge him at the dinner table."
So, yeah. Jesse was definitely my favorite character. Not really book-boyfriend quality, but he was a good friend and comic relief.
Now, onto Quinn, our protagonist. I'm kind of split on how I feel about her; half the time she was whining and hiding from people and pining after Cricket and being really pathetic, and the other half of the time she was pretty cool. My favorite thing about her was her love for architecture. So many books go for the "I'm an introverted bookworm who loves books!" trope, and while I do love that, I think that an architect was nice for a change. And I LOVED her mini chalet and treehouse. I too love making mini houses and things. (Actually, I would love to be an architect...except it involves too much math.) So Quinn's cool designer-architect stuff was really fun.
Cricket...first of all, why on earth was her name Cricket??? Did her parents actually name her that??? (Mr. and Mrs. Hughes: Ah yes, our two children. We shall give one a nice, normal name, like Quinn, and the other...Cricket. Like the bug.)
Anyway...what you need to know is that Cricket is not a kind, selfless, amazing big sister who always deserves Quinn's attention. She's really an attention-seeking, selfish, manipulative brat who only helps Quinn because she doesn't want to spend Christmas at the beach with her family, she'd rather go skiing with her friends and her rude boyfriend. And she didn't even really "help" Quinn, she just tried to force her sister to follow in her footsteps, when what Quinn really wanted to do was be herself.
But her faults did kind of make her feel more realistic, I guess.
Don't even get me started on the parents...Quinn and Cricket unironically call their parents "Mom-Mom and Dad-Pop." Why? WHY??? How can they do that with a straight face??? Also the parents were super annoying and nosy. For example, Quinn was having a romantic moment with Jesse when Dad-Pop interrupts, saying "Go to your own house Jesse, it's Christmas Eve!" and totally ruining the romantic atmosphere!
Some of the side characters were funny too. I particularly liked The Jesse Winer Quartet. I wish they'd had more page time. I liked Wes, too. He was pretty nice, just not super interesting. I liked Olivia, I don't get why Quinn was all "uGh i HaTe oLiViA sHe'S sO mEaN aNd AnNoYiNg." She was honestly pretty cool. And I thought Rylee and Dax were funny too, even though they only appeared like twice. And I liked Jesse's sister Audrey, but that's only because she shares my name 😂
My biggest annoyance with the book is has no sentence variation whatsoever. Every time a character says something, it goes "dialogue." character [insert verb for said]
Maybe I'm just a nitpicky editor person, but I prefer to not have everything set up the exact same way like that.
Other than that the writing style was okay. The number of times Quinn and Cricket used the word "hot" when describing Wes was actually surprisingly realistic for teenage girls lol
Also, the number of times it said "Cricket chirped" when Cricket said something was HILARIOUS!
I also appreciated how it was totally clean! Nothing questionable, which is rare in a young adult book. The only thing to note is the use of a few very mild curse words, nothing too bad though.
So. While I think it's not the most well-written book ever, I did still find it very enjoyable to read and I would probably read it again. 3.75 stars!
No. Not at all.
But did I enjoy reading it?
Surprisingly, yes!
First things first: the book description literally tells you 90% of the plot. Overall the story is a little predictable.
But! That doesn't mean it isn't worth reading.
Quinn Hughes is a creative high school junior who apparently can't survive unless her sister Cricket is there to tell her how to live her life. When Cricket goes away to college, Quinn falls apart and becomes completely incapable of doing anything by herself. Quinn's absurdly obnoxious and nosy helicopter parents threaten to drag the girls to the beach for Christmas if Quinn doesn't pull herself together. So Cricket bribes Quinn's incredibly weird neighbor Jesse Winer to be Quinn's (only) friend and her #1 supporter (so basically, replacement Cricket). Of course, after all of Cricket's twisted plots to fix Quinn's life work, about 90% of the way through the book Quinn discovers Cricket's scheme and has a meltdown. No spoilers for the ending...but you can probably guess how it ends.
But. Even though the plot wasn't the best, I still enjoyed reading it! Here are some reasons why:
The characters! Specifically Jesse. He was actually hilarious! He was super weird and funny and sweet and I really enjoyed reading the scenes he was in. I cannot emphasize just how weird he was, though. For example, he has a crush on Quinn (why? She has almost no personality!) and he wants to create a symphony inspired by her. So when Quinn throws her homemade lemon-spice bars into a bush, (why, you ask? because she makes terrible decisions, that's why.) Jesse rescues them from the bush and takes them home. Then he proceeds to eat all of them, keep the dish, and TIE A STRING TO IT AND HANG IT FROM HIS CEILING ALONG WITH A WHISK AND A NAPKIN LIKE A LITTLE MOBILE AND CALL IT "INSPIRATION FOR HIS SYMPHONY"
This is how he responds when Cricket sees the mobile and is understandably weirded out by it:
"It's my inspiration right now." Jesse declared, looking up at the dish from the floor. "For a symphony. The sweet and the spice and the warm, cozy autumn smells and the vibe. And Quinn with her auburn hair like fire." ... "Don't worry, I'll get the dish back to you guys soon." he assured Cricket. "I got photos. Not the same, but good enough."
I'm not going to lie, I was laughing hysterically for a solid minute after I read this. Mostly because of how unexpected it was.
But as the novel went on, I realized this was actually quite in character for Jesse. Here's another part that Jesse thought that made laugh:
"His mom said that when people criticise, it's because they're insecure and has nothing to do with you, like when his sister Audrey installed padded insulation on her wall to shut out his piano playing and refused to acknowledge him at the dinner table."
So, yeah. Jesse was definitely my favorite character. Not really book-boyfriend quality, but he was a good friend and comic relief.
Now, onto Quinn, our protagonist. I'm kind of split on how I feel about her; half the time she was whining and hiding from people and pining after Cricket and being really pathetic, and the other half of the time she was pretty cool. My favorite thing about her was her love for architecture. So many books go for the "I'm an introverted bookworm who loves books!" trope, and while I do love that, I think that an architect was nice for a change. And I LOVED her mini chalet and treehouse. I too love making mini houses and things. (Actually, I would love to be an architect...except it involves too much math.) So Quinn's cool designer-architect stuff was really fun.
Cricket...first of all, why on earth was her name Cricket??? Did her parents actually name her that??? (Mr. and Mrs. Hughes: Ah yes, our two children. We shall give one a nice, normal name, like Quinn, and the other...Cricket. Like the bug.)
Anyway...what you need to know is that Cricket is not a kind, selfless, amazing big sister who always deserves Quinn's attention. She's really an attention-seeking, selfish, manipulative brat who only helps Quinn because she doesn't want to spend Christmas at the beach with her family, she'd rather go skiing with her friends and her rude boyfriend. And she didn't even really "help" Quinn, she just tried to force her sister to follow in her footsteps, when what Quinn really wanted to do was be herself.
But her faults did kind of make her feel more realistic, I guess.
Don't even get me started on the parents...Quinn and Cricket unironically call their parents "Mom-Mom and Dad-Pop." Why? WHY??? How can they do that with a straight face??? Also the parents were super annoying and nosy. For example, Quinn was having a romantic moment with Jesse when Dad-Pop interrupts, saying "Go to your own house Jesse, it's Christmas Eve!" and totally ruining the romantic atmosphere!
Some of the side characters were funny too. I particularly liked The Jesse Winer Quartet. I wish they'd had more page time. I liked Wes, too. He was pretty nice, just not super interesting. I liked Olivia, I don't get why Quinn was all "uGh i HaTe oLiViA sHe'S sO mEaN aNd AnNoYiNg." She was honestly pretty cool. And I thought Rylee and Dax were funny too, even though they only appeared like twice. And I liked Jesse's sister Audrey, but that's only because she shares my name 😂
My biggest annoyance with the book is has no sentence variation whatsoever. Every time a character says something, it goes "dialogue." character [insert verb for said]
Maybe I'm just a nitpicky editor person, but I prefer to not have everything set up the exact same way like that.
Other than that the writing style was okay. The number of times Quinn and Cricket used the word "hot" when describing Wes was actually surprisingly realistic for teenage girls lol
Also, the number of times it said "Cricket chirped" when Cricket said something was HILARIOUS!
I also appreciated how it was totally clean! Nothing questionable, which is rare in a young adult book. The only thing to note is the use of a few very mild curse words, nothing too bad though.
So. While I think it's not the most well-written book ever, I did still find it very enjoyable to read and I would probably read it again. 3.75 stars!
February 19, 2023
~With or In Spite of Her Supportive & Quirky Family, Quinn questions her path.~
We each have our own journey, whether the road is clearly marked or we figure it out step-by-step. In this engaging novel written and narrated by Nicole Schubert, Quinn is in a unique situation after her super sister, Cricket, moves away for college. She has the advantage of being in an intact and supportive family, where she can figure out if her path is to follow exactly in Cricket’s footsteps, as she believes is expected.
-Laugh, cringe and smile through the well meaning antics of Quinn’s family and friends. Oh sisters!
We each have our own journey, whether the road is clearly marked or we figure it out step-by-step. In this engaging novel written and narrated by Nicole Schubert, Quinn is in a unique situation after her super sister, Cricket, moves away for college. She has the advantage of being in an intact and supportive family, where she can figure out if her path is to follow exactly in Cricket’s footsteps, as she believes is expected.
-Laugh, cringe and smile through the well meaning antics of Quinn’s family and friends. Oh sisters!
December 17, 2025
1.5 ⭐️
Now I love a good YA romance, but this was not it. It felt too young for me. The characters I did not enjoy except Jesse. The parents felt… bizarre. Overly controlling sisters, too sensitive teens and the premise felt weird. Who would fight that hard against going to Cancun for Christmas??
Now I love a good YA romance, but this was not it. It felt too young for me. The characters I did not enjoy except Jesse. The parents felt… bizarre. Overly controlling sisters, too sensitive teens and the premise felt weird. Who would fight that hard against going to Cancun for Christmas??
November 10, 2025
She calls her dad “Dad-Pop” unironically.
November 10, 2025
I wanted to give you a zero, but I couldn’t; so I give you a one.
Side note: She called her parents Mom-Mom and Dad-Pop.
Side note: She called her parents Mom-Mom and Dad-Pop.
December 7, 2025
-3.38 stars ⭐️
December 15, 2023
I bought this book for my sisters and I am enjoying it because it is about sisters and friends. Cute. Family. A fun read for teens and adults who like happy family movies. If you like Hallmark Channel, you will love this book.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews