Red Flags: What Every Girl Should Look Our for

Rating:
Summary: How to flag the toads!
Review: How's a girl to know if she's found her Prince Charming? How's she to know if she's kissing a frog instead? Yolanda Nave answers both these questions in Red Flags, a slim volume that outlines, "What every girl should look out for...."

Amusing drawings accompany each pointer, such as a girl trying to prop up a lopsided heart (signifying a one-sided relationship); or the page that explains a red flag is a girl's intuition trying to tell her she is about to make a bad move, which is accompanied by a drawing of a girl with a hobo on a bench.

Too often, girls ignore the red flags that come up in a relationship - warning signs that the relationship is headed for trouble - like when a boy tells a girl he doesn't drink or do drugs; his only weakness is "Girls, girls, girls!"

What else is sufficient for a girl to red flag a relationship? There's the boy who wants to borrow money from her, the boy who tries to tell her the hickey on his neck is a spider bite, a boy who does drugs, or a boy who treats her like dirt.

Nave's book clearly sends a message that many girls need to hear; that they should let their conscience be their guide and tune in to their intuition when it is trying to tell them that they are making a mistake. The book also shows girls how to make a checklist of good qualities that a boy must have, and the importance of having common interests in order for the relationship to be fulfilling, while encouraging girls to stop rationalizing or making excuses for their boyfriend or potential boyfriend. Instead, it offers good alternatives such as discussing the problem and trying to find solutions or, if that fails, ending the relationship.

Nave's book offers sound advice that can only help raise girls' self-esteem, telling them that everyone deserves someone special who loves them just the way they are and that finding someone who is right for them takes time.

Red Flags is small enough to fit into a purse or pocket, can be read in a matter of minutes and includes a page of red-flag stickers (in various degrees of unfurl to signify how serious the problem is) that can be placed on appropriate pages. The back cover also has a foldout flap that turns the cover into a mailing envelope to mail it to a friend.

Red Flags is a book that every girl or woman should buy or be given.