I'm Free But It'll Cost You
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Kim Coles
AALBC Price: $13.26

Review from Kirkus :
The sexy sistah from the TV show Living Single offers nothing new in this not-ready-for-prime-time guide for the single woman. Coles, a divorced black woman, rounds up the usual list of instructions: dating dos and don'ts, how to identify ``Mr. Right On!,'' learning to love yourself (metaphorically and physically), and how to get into successful relationships and out of disastrous ones. It's a tried-and-true humor-book formula that depends on only one thing: the humor.

Unfortunately, Coles just isn't funny. In her list of ``Ten Ways to Tell If a Brother Is Tight,'' she offers: ``Instead of a wallet he carries a piggy bank'' and ``The rain is his car wash.'' Coles's insights into the dating scene are banal, if not downright vulgar: ``Nowadays,'' she writes, ``trying to find your soul mate is harder than trying to take a dump in a public restroom.'' And while she argues in the introduction that this book is for everyone (``black women, black men, white women, white men, Hindus, Latinos, Filipinos, Quakers, the Flemish, Jews, Gentiles, Parisians, Istanbuliates, Istanbulionions, Istanbulish . . . huh?''), Coles's inclusiveness will only confuse her would-be core audience of black women.

Take some of her ``Nine Ways to Detect a Communication Breakdown in Your Relationship'': ``You tell her you want to see more of her, so she gains fifteen pounds'' or ``She tells you she wants to start seeing other people. You get her a subscription to People magazine.'' In a book that's mainly directed toward women, the reader wonders why the author is even talking to HIM. Coles would do better to stick to Living Single and leave the role of Miss Lonelyhearts to others.