You Deserve Healthy Love, Sis!: The Seven Steps to Getting the Relationship You Want

In her latest frank, lively volume,""spiritual psychologist"" and motivational speaker Cornish (10 Good Choices that Empower Black Women's Lives) delivers a pep talk to single African-American women. She reveals her secrets to attaining a""deep, nurturing, healthy type of love"" with a soul mate in her signature hyper-friendly style: variations of the""You go girl"" refrain abound, and most sections have rhyming maxims (e.g.,""It hurts to get the later from the smooth operator"" and""True friendship at its best will withstand any lifetime test""). Organized into seven sections, the book covers pre-dating issues, particularly baggage from former affairs, dating advice and relationship maintenance. Cornish's guidance is most concrete in when addressing the tricky early stages of courtship.""Ten Points to Check Out Before You Let Him In,"" for example, lists things one should know before becoming intimate with someone (it is, however, recycled from her previous book, 10 Bad Choices that That Ruin Black Women's Lives). Cornish's experience as a therapist on Queen Latifah, Montel and Ricki Lake has given her a colorful well of experience from which to draw anecdotes. While tales of drug-dealing scoundrels who impregnate multiple women make for interesting reading, those in less dramatic situations may find less to relate to. Because of the extremity of some of the examples, her subsequent advice often lingers at the most basic level of common sense--i.e., if he's married, don't get involved. But Cornish is a warm counselor and a good listener, as the many reader letters within will attest, and this book concludes a solid trilogy of advice books aimed at African-American women.