Mr LaRue, Chris and tgp got it right. It depends. A lot of people have been burnt recommending WP devices. If your recommendation is bad, you'll have to deal with your friends scorn for the duration of their cellular service contract, which can be even less pleasant for you then for the person that got stuck with the wrong device. Recommending WP can be both good and bad, depending on the potential buyers needs, but assessing those needs can be quite a task and is never without risk of missing something. One of the biggest risks is that most consumers are technophobes who have no idea what they want from a smartphone OS until they see it.
Rather than recommending WP, it's better to state what your own needs are, and then explain why WP is the right OS for you. These days, that will usually come down to softer factors that are harder to quantify (e.g. UI consistency across OS and apps). The types of obvious features that most consumers think about ("can it do X"), aren't WP's strengths.
Outside the U.S. , WP can make sense for people that are on a budget. IMHO it's only at the low end where WP starts to shine. Inside the U.S. , where the true cost of a device is hidden in the ridiculously expensive monthly service bills, I don't see why anyone would choose a Windows Phone (over high-end Android or iPhone), that doesn't care enough about technology to research the issues for themselves. For those people not interested enough to do the research themselves, I think it's a safer bet to stick with the mainstream devices... most of the time.