Told from Birdie’s POV, in timelines (then - 1975-1977, 1978-1981, 1981-1987, 1987-2000, and now - 2018), I was pulled in right away to Birdie’s story and stayed in (even though it made me so angry to keep reading).

The story is one as old as time - a young girl being sexualized for profit, for what society wants and expects. I was a teenager in the late 80’s and 90’s - I remember how the supermodels of the day were the only real role models many girls had. And how baffling that became to me as I grew up - that a person would be an inspiration solely by a case of genetics at play. How society wants to see, shame and blame women - judges, doctors, fashion designers, etc., etc., etc… men.

Birdie’s character growth is slow and muddled, from being deemed “uninteresting” by her own mother, to always feeling apart, not quite real, and only finally coming together toward the end. This seems deliberate on the part of Ms Rossi - after all, how can one grow and evolve when you’ve never known who you are?

The Cover Girl isn’t an easy read but I was very impressed with this debut novel, and will absolutely read the author’s future works.

Recommended.


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Regarding “the Rockstar” - yes, it was a different time, yes, there were groupies, and then “baby groupies”, and yes, you felt that you were fully grown up and mature at whatever age you were when an older, worldly person took interest. Neither of those things change the fact that countless cases grooming and statutory rape took place.
*Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) dated a 13/14 year old after becoming infatuated with her - he was 28.
*Julia Holcomb’s (16 years old) mother signed legal guardianship of her child over to Steven Tyler (Aerosmith) so she could go on tour with the band and Tyler could cross state lines with her - he was 26.
*Iggy Pop slept with a 13 year old when he was 21.
This behavior has gone on for decades - long before Jerry Lee Lewis (22) and his 13 year old cousin/wife, Elvis Presley (24) and Priscilla (14), and Bill Wyman (The Rolling Stones) meeting and grooming 13 year old Mandy Smith (whom he married when she turned 18). Countless others.

The list goes on and on and on and on and on, and those are just some of the better known cases. There are plenty involving people not in the spotlight who are groomers. All of my listed examples were heterosxual couples, but grooming takes place regardless of orientation.
The grooming of children needs to stop. Period.
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Thank you to MIRA and NetGalley for the DRC

“The Cover Girl,” by Ami Rossi, tells the tale of Birdie Rhodes, a young model, in both the past and in the present (which is 2018). I wasn’t sure what to expect in this book, but what I majorly felt was overwhelming sadness. What happened to Birdie is as old as time - young naive unsure of herself girl (I should say woman, but she was a girl) finds herself in a tough career (modeling is tough) - and back in the 1970s behavior was different. Then the twice her age rock star enters her life - and he decides he wants Birdie in his life … until he doesn’t anymore (to quote Taylor Swift “I’ll get older, but your lovers stay my age”). There’s not a lot of emotion in this book - things happen to Birdie and maybe she’s really good at compartmentalizing, but it seemed as if she never felt anything. I’m sure that was the style Ms. Rossi chose, but while Birdie’s behavior was explained, it felt like the reader was, like Birdie, an observer. In some ways, this book reminded me of “My Sweet Vanessa,” regarding the outsider saying “this is so wrong” but the main character not realizing that there could be another option .. and the sadness. In my mind, Birdie was let down by so many … including Harriet, her agent, though at least Harriet later said she tried as best she could. It took me a while to get through this book due to the overwhelming sadness for the situation. Granted, Birdie’s story isn’t unique sadly. That Birdie seemed, at the end, to have some friends and a community that cared about her was a good thing to me.

My heart truly hurts for Birdie Rhodes. This poor girl had no one really looking out for her. She became a model at such a young age and was taken under the wing of "the rock star" with her life and welfare signed away by her parents because they thought it's what she wanted and it suited them. Shameful stuff really. She had a manager who did her best (???) to look out for her, but it wasn't adequate and this girl was failed by practically everyone in her path. I think of myself at that age and the situations she was faced with and I'm surprised she turned out as a somewhat functioning adult. This was a very well done look at the life of a young model several decades ago...and it's pretty disturbing.

I was initially drawn to this book for it's time period and topic - young models in the 1970s/1980s, the very adult life they were expected to live, drugs/sex/rock and roll, etc. I've enjoyed the real-life accounts from women in the industry (The Super Models in particular) and was hoping The Cover Girl would bring a unique narrative to the space.

While Birdie's story was heartbreaking, it was also expected. An underage girl swept up in the excitement of fame and glamour, the dark side of the modeling and entertainment industry, a rock star who "has to have her", their ensuing tumultuous relationship. The story is interesting because of its salaciousness, but The Cover Girl brought nothing new to the conversation. It was very reminiscent of rock stars like Ted Nugent and Jimmy Page, who casually preyed on and sang about underage girls, and the way society at that time turned a blind eye and even blamed the young girls for "allowing" it.

Did I enjoy the novel? Yes. Is it memorable, and would I recommend it? Not quite.

This book is a true portrayal of what it must feel like to be invisible to others. To be willingly characterized by simply a body part which in Birdie's case were her legs. Even though the rock star professed his love as he called her "Little Bird", Birdie has no idea what love entails especially when there was none given by her parents. She was simply a child and a mannequin to be dressed and meant to stand alongside the rock star. She had no real connections with others and simply stared ahead and showcased her legs at every opportunity. That is all she believed she was worth. Bernice and Harriet certainly encouraged her to be more. Yes, she had exciting opportunities as a model that pranced in runway shows and magazine ads. However, the sacrifice was far greater as it stifled her evolution as an adult. I cannot imagine what it would be like to only think of oneself as an object and not a person. She was a cover.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing/MIRA for this riveting ARC of The Cover Girl by Amy Rossi.

This was an auto-request for me. I have always been fascinated by models, these other-worldly beings and their imagined fantasy lives, granted to them by virtue of coming out of their mothers a generic freakishness of physical perfection.
They seem born into the greatest superpower, beauty: one I imagined would sustain a model for her entire life, aging and relationship issues weak foes against their posessed glamour.

There was much in this book that I could relate to. There is, alongside the voyerism into the life of a model and all of the glamour that entails (or supposedly entails); a tale about the pain of not belonging and of the loneliness of human existence even when pretending not to be human.

Our main character Birdie Rhodes might have seemed superhuman but that state never amounted to human.

She was also not quite famous. She hovered in the realm between stardom and still-something-special.

Birdie Rhodes shows us her life, from the magical moment that powerful maternal Harriet discovered - plucked from the dreary general public - and made her one of “her girls” to when an older but potent rock star discovered her - plucked again - and made her his ward and his “little [love] bird,” to her tumble from both benefactors’ favor and their respective designations.

Birdie’s is a life of an object who needs others to tell her what she is. Who she is.

Birdie’s damaged self-identity comes from the origin of her natural gifts: her parents, especially her mother, and the lack of love there. Her mother deemed Birdie “uninteresting,” an albatross she carried for life.
To be both special but boring is Birdie’s curse. Her parents started the transactional precedent that Birdie’s existence would become.

Agent Harriet fulfills a mother-role to some degree in Birdie’s life but only when she is a good model (object) and not a disappointment (human). Birdie navigates the “growing pains” of her modeling career (as well as enduring the same of the rock star’s) with astute vision of what she is paid to do. To be.

Often in the context of her work, she is able to channel her power, to “be the me I could be.” To deliver. To be “a conduit of possibility.” But mostly, to be “just legs.”

She often feels alone as a person, abandoned by temporary connection after connection in her life. Rarely, she recognizes pure kindness.

Birdie herself is a player in the one-dimension of her world. She revers the rock star as a thing, his title, his profession equaling who he was and what she loved.

We experience her dual-timeline journey of becoming a person after losing her power and how daunting it was for her to be human, and to later re-visit her former self at a gala honoring Harriet.

Even at the start of her success, the story carries a weighty foreboding. Birdie never quite eases into a model’s coveted existence. She strives. She is not elite among the elites; the rock star dismantled her priorities at a crucial time in her professional uprising.

This gravity did not at all spoil the peek behind the camera as it were.
Indeed, for a story about an objectified existence, it conveyed a depth of emotion that I found myself tearing up at points.

This book to me is about being real - human - underneath image. About the pain of learning what that reality is and accepting its inherent flaws. It is about people vs. pretending, what matters vs. what doesn’t, aging out and acceptance. Love and lies.

I recommend this book especially to women who ever felt objectified, especially if their sense of self or survival depended upon it.

Five stars!

Not what I expected by I really enjoyed this book. I enjoyed reading this story of a model and the trials of life. But overall it was just okay.

I received this book as an arc from NetGalley

Amy Rossi brings us the story of Birdie and her life story. When Birdie receives an invitation to celebrate the life of modeling agent Harriet, Birdie is thrust back in time when it all began. She recalls being thirteen when she was "discovered" and how she worked hard to become the model everyone wanted. She remembers her time with parents who never really wanted her and schoolmates and teachers who never really saw her potential. How it only took Harriet to really see her and what she could become. How it only took noticing her for Birdie to follow a man who was almost twenty years older than her around the country as he performed for the crowds. How saying words of love from him allowed her to forgive his many transgressions.

Follow along with Birdie as we go with her on a retrospective on her life from the moment she starts modeling to the present. Read to see how the people who noticed her and ignored her changed her life. See what she does and how her life choices affect her future. Will Birdie become a strong version of herself, or will she forever be stuck as the one who does as she is told without complaint? Turn the page to see how life has fared for model Birdie Rhodes and if she has made peace with the past and all the regrets it contained.

I have read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. I would like to thank NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing | MIRA for this privilege.

First I'm so grateful I was able to read this Advance Readers Copy of The Cover Girl. We follow Birdies life of her being discovered at Saks and becomes a model. She is trying to figure out who she is. A beautiful girl is trying to navigate the world of modeling and her own world which seems so lonely. It was an interesting read.
But at times it felt as if I was reading a history book. Sometimes it was a list of what happened and then this happened etc. I'm assuming the character is supposed to be stoic. There are some parts of the book where she is being taking advantage of and she says nothing... we don't get a description of her emotions. I'm not sure if there was a trigger warning. I think there should be because there are parts where a minor is being taken advantage of by people much older then her. I might ve missed it. This was a good book but I feel that it wasn't a book for me.

Told in two different timelines, this novel is about Birdie Rhodes, who was discovered at a young age by a legendary modeling agent. Learning a lot about this lifestyle and feeling like her life had just begun, it soon comes to a crashing halt as she falls for a 31-year-old rock star.

Decades later, she receives an invitation to celebrate her agent's long career. Not wanting to return to her past life but feeling the need to come to terms with how her life turned out and her shattered career, Birdie has a decision to make. Should she attend this party and be confronted with the past? Or should she continue to move forward with her comfortable life?

This was a decent book with a good plot. The characters could have been more developed, as they lacked a connection with the story and the reader (myself). Overall, it was a fun and sometimes disturbing read.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Cover Girl is not the story you would expect. Amy Rossi gives us an up close, in depth look at a 13-year old model and her rise to fame. Very enlightening & an informative read.

Thank you NetGalley & Harlequin Trade Publishing|MIRA for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Very interesting and perspective novel about the rise and fall of a 13 year old who becomes a model and involved in an "abusive" relationship in the 1970's-1980's - a very interesting time for upcoming models. In the end she finally finds redemption as an adult and learns how to forgive and move on with her life. Thanks for the advanced read!

Interesting book about a cover girl and her rise to fame and her friends. Her relationship with the rock star and her parents. Also, her relationship with Harriet. Loved the interview and time frames.

Thanks to NeGalley and MIRA for the opportunity to read The Cover Girl by Amy Rossi. This book was much more than what I was expecting; far from a frothy light read, but one woman's story against an historical background of change. Highly recommended.