For fans of My Dark Vanessa and Taylor Jenkins Reid, this striking debut novel explores the dizzying fallout of being seen and not heard in a high-stakes industry that leaves no silhouette unscathed.

Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Amy Rossi’s The Cover Girl, which is out August 5th 2025.

Birdie Rhodes was only thirteen when legendary modeling agent Harriet Goldman discovered her in a department store and transformed her into one of Harriet’s Girls. What followed felt like the start of something incredible, a chance for shy Birdie to express herself in front of the camera. But two years later, she meets a thirty-one-year-old rock star, and her teenage heart falls hard as he leads her into a new life, despite Harriet’s warnings. Then, as abruptly as it began, it’s over, like a lipstick-smeared fever dream. Birdie tries hard to forget that time—starting over in Paris, in the dying embers of the LA punk scene, in Boston at the height of the AIDS crisis. She’s not that person anymore. At least, that’s what she’s been telling herself.

Decades later, Birdie lives a quiet life. She works modest gigs, takes Pilates and mostly keeps to herself. Maybe it’s not the glamor she once envisioned, but it’s peaceful. Comfortable. Then a letter arrives, inviting Birdie to celebrate Harriet’s fifty-year career. Except Birdie hasn’t spoken to her in nearly thirty years—with good reason.

Almost famous, almost destroyed, Birdie can only make her own future if she reckons with her past—the fame, the trauma, the opportunities she gave up for a man who brought her into a life she wasn’t ready for. Just like she’s not ready now. But the painful truth waits for nobody. Not even Birdie Rhodes.

The ad is for a multivitamin. Three postmenopausal women friends, doing postmenopausal women yoga, because they get the nutrients they need to stay premenopausal vibrant from this vitamin.

I know already the yoga will be funny. We are always laughing in these ads, with our fifty-is-the-new-forty humor, unless it’s an ad for erectile dysfunction medication. Those might include laughter too, laughter as foreplay, but there’s at least a 50 percent chance I’ll get to smolder—tastefully, in beige—instead.

If only it were possible to be signed to an exclusive Cialis contract—those kitchens, bathtubs, cars.

But today, it is vitamins. Routine hair, routine makeup, routine expensive yoga clothes and accessories. Routine until I see my postmenopausal women friends. One of them I recognize

from auditions. The other I’m certain I’ve never met until she does a double take. “Oh, my god, Birdie Rhodes! Is that you?”

That name from a stranger’s mouth moves through me like the chill of a ghost. I try to correct her: Elizabeth. She doesn’t hear me.

“It’s me! Sunny! I haven’t seen you since New Orleans—that was, what, forty years ago? My god! Remember those days? I had no idea you were still around too.”

My first thought is that her too is carrying a lot of weight.

My second: that I have two choices. I can let this be uncomfortable for me or I can make it uncomfortable for everyone.

If I focus, if I close my eyes and really think about it, I could probably make myself conjure the job in question. I could make myself remember when.

But I choose not to. It’s how I’m still here. Forgetting is not always an accident.

Perhaps I should be more prepared for such things. Perhaps it’s only surprising that it hasn’t happened sooner. But a career like this is not exactly the standard. There are some women who start famous and stay famous, like Brooke Shields, but there are many more who retire into motherhood or pursue other interests, other careers with more stability and that don’t involve the same level of body maintenance and constant rejection. It is a small world, yes, but one that we are constantly dropping ourselves off the face of.

Sunny turns to the other postmenopausal friend, who does not look very post- and could in fact very well pass for peri-. “We did this shoot in New Orleans when we were teenagers!

That photographer was the worst. But those pictures—we had these ridiculous coats. I might be able to find a photo somewhere—you’ve got to see it. And Birdie completely saved the day, she called her—”

See also

I see I’m going to have to go with uncomfortable for everyone. So I shake my head and interrupt Sunny to say that I’m sorry, but I do not remember.

At first, she laughs. “The fur coats! Gus! Are you serious? You really don’t remember this?” When I shake my head again, her expression darkens. “Well,” she sniffs. “I guess it was forty years ago.”

The fitness watch I’ve been given as a prop flashes with a message: You’re in the cardio zone! More accurate would be: Congratulations on your fight-or-flight response! No need to question why.

I fake a few overhead stretches and deep breaths to try to slow my heart.

“Good idea,” the other model says. “We should limber up.”

Throughout the shoot, I can feel Sunny’s glances trying to pin me down, trying to keep me in my head. I close my eyes, let them bounce off. There is no me. There is only a woman who loves yoga and her friends and her vitamins. This is her time.

Later, sitting in traffic, I book the thread lift and the eyelid lift. Why not both? Create a face where the memories should be.

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