Jen is a beautiful young woman who works in entertainment in Las Vegas as a pop-out girl. She was raised by a mom who also works in Las Vegas. Jen grew up watching her mom go through a series of failed romances, so she didn’t have a good role model when it came to relationships. At seventeen she got involved with Zane, who was a bad boy. Their strongly intense, physical relationship came to a halt when Zane went to prison. Being young, Jen moved on with life. When Zane got out of prison, he was not willing to accept that she moved on with her life and he did everything he could to try to ruin her chance of happiness with someone else. This included shooting the man that Jen will soon discover is her birth father. As Jen tries to figure her life out, the author takes us into her mother’s past so that we can gain an understanding of what went wrong in her life. Things are so much more complex than would appear on the surface.
I have had the pleasure of reading all of the books written by the author Irene Woodbury. Once again, she does not disappoint. The good characters are likeable and very real. The bad character is bad. But the author takes us inside his mind so that we can see how he thinks. That doesn’t make his behavior acceptable but it does give us a better understanding of why he is the way he is. This knowledge adds more dimension to the storyline. Going back and forth between the mother and daughter’s stories broke up the intensity of each situation so it diluted their experiences, however, in retrospect it helped everything fall into place. I recommend this book to fans of romance and drama. They will enjoy being able to take off to another adventure in Las Vegas. ( )

Pop-Out Girl will appeal to fans of women's fiction who look for stories of feisty females in difficult situations and provides the realistic story of a couple challenged when an ex-boyfriend leaves prison and begins stalking them. Jealousy and its dangerous course is one of the primary themes of the story as Jen and Colton face a dangerous convict who still has the idea that Jen is his girlfriend, despite obvious indicators otherwise - and who has no intention of letting her go.

As violent encounters escalate and drag innocents into Zane's quest to regain his position in Jen's life, Jen faces difficult decisions that test her resolve, her future, and her inclination to view the world through the eyes of an optimistic romantic.

Jen's career, also shelved, was serving as a 'pop-out girl': one who emerges from giant cakes to then sing, dance, and provide a stripper show for special events. This theme - of emergence, daring, and putting on a display - pops up through the story, which foregoes a slow build-up in favor of a vivid kidnapping scene and just keeps escalating from there.

Jen's perspective isn't the only focus to this story: Jen's mother Brandi, who is a cocktail waitress, faces the fact that her first love from long ago, Jen's father, has also inadvertently become part of Zane's dangerous spree, and her involvement and perspective are also developed as one of the strong threads connecting family and love.

From how Jen squeezed a romance with Colton into her busy career as a pop-up girl to the terrors of being stalked by a relentless ex with murderous intentions on his mind, Pop-Out Girl excels in interconnected subplots and in capturing a winning background filled with the glitz and glamour of its Vegas setting.

There were a few lapses in punctuation, for example, a period left off the end of a sentence ending with quotation marks. But these instances do not detract from the overall plot.

Women who look for realistic, powerful stories of love and survival, jealousy and confrontation, and change will find Pop-Out Girl a winning leisure choice that probes troubled relationships, alienation, and the long and rocky path to home. ( )

Jen's life goes from zero to one hundred in a split second. Kidnapped by her ex-boyfriend, she makes every attempt to get free, and when she does, she learns the truth about her past.

The telling of this story is a bit choppy. It is divided into sections and each section is about a different person connected to Jen. We start with her and the kidnapping. There is a rape, though it is not detailed or graphic. Then, we jump to her mother and go back in time to tell her mother's story.

Each section feels like it could have been expanded into separate stories to be better told. We spend a lot more time with Jen's mom, so I feel like I came to know her better than Jen herself. As stated in the description, there are happy endings, but not for everyone. There is one particular person who is a real jerk by the end.

Overall, it is an interesting story and it was fascinating to see each person's story and how they all connected to Jen.

I received a free copy from the author through More Than A Review where I rate a book by its contents. ( )

Do not judge a book by its cover. This book has a lot of good, solid substance with good characters and a nice storyline. The story that the author writes is one where readers can find a connection with all of the characters in this book.

Although, at the beginning of this book, I was starting to have second thoughts about it. It felt too "fluffy" and I was not feeling any of the characters or the story. Just in part two of this book, which goes back in time to set up the present events that happen in part one; this was a whole different story. I instantly was connected to the characters and what I was reading. My only real complaint had to do with Brandi and Matt's story. They kept mentioning their great love for each other but Brandi never one sought out Matt again and Matt tried but not very hard. If they shared this deep love, I wanted them to fight for it more. So, it kind of was exhausting hearing them both mention each other when they were in other relationships all the time.

My overall thoughts about this book:

More then a comedy
Good characters
Nice storyline
Easy reading
Will read more books from this author. ( )