You Better Not Pout

Home Sweet Holidays

De: Mia Sosa

Narrado por: Andre Santana, Gisela Chípe

A freshly broken-up couple agrees to grin and bear it for their family’s sake in a story about the healing power of the holidays from Mia Sosa, USA Today bestselling author of The Worst Best Man.

Juliana and Eric called off their engagement—but Christmas with the family is just around the corner, so things are going to get awkward, fast. Unless, of course, they pretend the wedding is still on. But the holidays are gonna holiday. And the only thing harder than pretending they’re still in love is trying not to fall for each other all over again.

Mia Sosa’s You Better Not Pout is part of Home Sweet Holidays, a cookie-sweet collection of holiday romances sure to bring color to your cheeks. Read or listen to each story in a single heart-fluttering sitting. And to fully immerse yourself in the charm of the season, don’t miss a special message from each of our holiday heroes!

©2025 by Mia Sosa. (P)2025 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Not for me.

My least favorite in this little collection. I didn’t care about these characters or their story at all.

1.5 Stars

This was my least favorite of the 4 stories in the Holiday novella series. It was also my first time reading something from "new to me" author Mia Sosa.

I do not want to be negative so I will just say that this story did not work for me - at all. I did not like the premise - which was that our FMC Juliana and our MMC Eric just broke up a week ago (they had been engaged to be married). To top that off, the FMC uses their rent-controlled apartment as leverage to get her ex-fiancé to agree to still attend their families Christmas celebrations and pretend that they are still engaged. Juliana does not want her family - specifically her mother - to have their holidays ruined if they discover the breakup. If Eric agrees to do this, she will let him keep the apartment.

Unfortunately, I did not like either character. This story was also too short for us to have enough time to see any character development that might have been able to help mitigate my feelings.

And on top of that, the circumstances surrounding the whole premise just did not work for me. You broke up because there were issues - yet after a couple of days in some stressful situations, you decide that you made a mistake and get back together.

Nope. Just couldn't buy it.

Let me fall in love first

My favorite part of the book was that the FMC’s name is Juliana because I rarely see my own name in novels, so that was a fun. Unfortunately, I never felt the love between the main characters, so their getting back together felt unearned and left me uninterested in their relationship.

The scene where she runs into her ex felt really awkward and out of place, which made it hard to stay invested in the story. Overall, the book just didn’t click for me and I struggled to care about what happened to the characters.

didnt connect with characters but was solid

I breezed through these 4 novellas as I was decorating my house for the Christmas holiday and they were all very different which I appreciated. I think this was my least favorite. I didnt really connect until the very end and when its a short story that makes this difficult. I appreciated the storyline and how things progressed but the connection for me wasn't there. I did feel a jab a little with the FMC and her connection to her work haha, but that was the only thing that really connected me. Story was a 3 stars.

Narration was good, I would give it 3.5 stars, which is why I kept the overall review a 3 stars. I haven't listened to either of them before. I will look for others in my library with them, they haven't made it to my automatic download list like some other narrators, but they did a good job here to be on my radar, for sure.

Holiday second chance

I don't really like relationship in distress short stories and second chance is my least favorite trope so this wasn't the eight story for me. Tha narration improved the story, though.