Carpool to Christmas

A sweet, funny holiday romance full of love, friendship and family that'll leave you smiling. From Independent Publisher and Readers' Favorite award-winning author of Blues Harp Green and Saoirse Berger's Bookish Lens in La La Land.

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.