Solid storytelling, if expected and uncomplicated. Kiste's command of atmosphere is the collection's strongest selling point.

Something Borrowed, Something Blue - Woman gives birth to birds. The similes, so many similes, were overkill.

Ten Things To Know About Ten Questions - Straightforward fable about conformity and nonconformity. You can quiz yourself along with the story. A bit gimmicky, I guess, but the prose draws you in. It's the implicit, lesser thematic iteration of the tower princess story.

The Clawfoot Requiem - Sister's suicide triggers woman's newfound understanding of death. Silly, predictable ending. It should have been shattering; it wasn't.

All the Red Apples Have Withered to Gray - Snow White/Sleeping Beauty remix. I think I've reached my limit for abusive fathers in dark fantasy fiction; possibly why I didn't care for this in proportion to its prose quality.

The Man in the Ambry - Girl's childhood imaginary friend may hold the answer to her adult problems. Cute, insofar as this kind of story can be cute, but tired and intensely predictable. You know how this one ends one page in. I gave it a pass because Kiste subverts tropey cat violence (and I would have stopped reading if she hadn't).

Find Me, Mommy - Mother's grief over losing her child.

Audrey at Night - Newlywed haunted by former best friend. The earliest story in the collection; less polished than the others.

The Five-Day Summer Camp - Two sisters vs. dystopian system.

Skin Like Honey and Lace - A vaguely Beauty & The Beast wlw retelling.

By Now I'll Probably Be Gone - I had to grab the book to remember what this one was about, and now that I have, I know why: it is a dumb story. Woman kills herself over husband's affair. My eyes are rolling so hard I may never retrieve them.

Through Earth and Sky - Hmm... Unspecified Native American woman avenges herself on sister's killer.

The Tower Princesses - Walls, real and metaphorical. Imaginative take on the titular trope with two girls instead of a prince and princess. Should have a content warning for sexual assault and attempted rape.

And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe - Nope. It untethered nothing. Modern day admirer of a thinly disguised Sharon Tate tracks down secret fifth film.

The Lazarus Bride - Man's love has consequences (tho tbh it never really read like love to me, but that feels like a deliberate authorial choice).

This is one horror collection that no shelf should be without.

I have been hearing a lot of love for this writer and this collection of stories, and it is completely justified. The hype is real, y'all! Go out and buy your copy immediately—no joke.

The stories felt in the tradition of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, with a mix of fairy tale elements like the twist on a poisoned apple story or the tale of princesses stuck in castles, some strangeness that could be read as metaphorical but also worked as great body horror like the one where a woman is giving birth to birds or the one where a group of women hunt for potential victims and peel their skin off to use for themselves.

In these stories, Kiste explores women at the fringes—the outcasts, the strange, the othered. The stories are interested in how these women are seen as outsiders and how they work with the limitations others have put on them and overcome them in one way or another.

I loved how the characters in these stories take action. They are not the stagnant, mopey, unreliable narrator types that are so common in the popular thrillers today. These women are powerful and have clear, strong notions of what they want from the world, even if that notion is not the one that lines up with what everyone else wants. Kiste's character's learn they aren't afraid to take what should have been theirs all along. It's empowering and beautiful while leaning over the edge into strange, fantastical, and frightening.

Sometimes the stories defy logic, sometimes they go to very dark places, but they never failed to impress me with the breadth of their creativity, the beauty of the language, and the sharp insights that are not something you always find in horror fiction.

A beautiful and haunting collection. There is not a weak story in the set. Kiste is an author I'm adding to my instant-buy list.

Unnerving Magazine Review
This is another of those rare instances where I shall bury some my enthusiasm for the sake of professionalism. But first, And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe is absolutely fucking incredible.
There's an I-can't-quite-put-my-finger-on-it feeling to most of the stories when it comes to pinning down a genre. The collection opens on a dark fantasy. It’s avian, it’s weird, it’s heavy, enveloping.
As far as result is concerned, little changes with the second story, swap the birds for disappearances and you’re about to understand that the fantastic first story was not a fluke, nor was the second, or third, or fourth...
Emotional and weighty in its descriptions and needs, The Clawfoot Requiem brings a touch more horror into the equation, but nothing brash or heartbeat pattering. It is a backdoor, all-consuming horrific vibe. 
As it happens often in this collection the unlikely digs in its nails and becomes a fact, something to lose, or burn up. There are fairy tale vibes, twisted and reimagined for tales of death, and rebirth, and mystery. 
A recurring theme here is the outsider, told from the view of the outsider. The unwanted figure looking in, cowering, running away from trauma. It’s not an unusual subject for fiction, but Gwendolyn Kiste offers such an original and wrenching distribution it would be difficult to compare her to many others.
I’ve read a book or two and none come to mind readily.
If I thought it necessary to go on along the same thread, it would be easy to point out titles in this collection that would standout placed in virtually any anthology of shorts. And do so over and over and over and... The voice and themes here shake the expected and reinvent the norms so easily the fantastical aspects fit everywhere. The somber tones and palpable emotions compliment in a perfect, eloquent companionship of dark literature. Gwendolyn Kiste has an imagination and delivery that is not only rare, but extraordinary. It is profound and touching on so many levels that this works towers above the majority of ARCs from my inbox.
After And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, Gwendolyn Kiste is on my personal short list of must-read authors. If there’s another collection as good as this in 2017, I will be surprised. I certainly won’t hold my breath on it.

I'm not entirely sure how or when I got word of Gwendolyn Kiste and this collection; I'd previously thought it was through maybe one of the Year's Best Weird Fiction volumes or one of the Jeff and Anne VanderMeer-edited tomes, but...apparently not. She must have shown up on my radar in another fashion. Regardless, I'm very glad she did. This collection felt more like dark fantasy than horror which was also surprising, but not unwelcome; still weirdness, still well written and interesting, and a nice break from the bleakness (though there was some bleakness in several of the tales).

A nice mix of story lengths and different narrative voices and choices kept me interested and burning through the pages at a nice clip. Some favorites: "Something Borrowed, Something Blue", for its strangeness; same with "Ten Things to Know About the Ten Questions". "Audrey at Night" through the end of the collection, for similar reasons. Particular mention goes to the title story, because it involves film and for whatever reason I just totally dig any weird stories that deal with films, be they cursed or not. I am definitely interested in exploring more of her work in the future!

Though it’s tricky to rate short story collections, these made me feel a bit more than mid. I found the 14 stories to be rather light on horror, though some were certainly disturbing and all were beautifully written. I like that the collection centers on the female experience and accentuates horrors that women endure. My favorite was “Aubrey at Night”

This is an excellent collection of speculative short fiction. In each and every story, Kiste deftly pulls reality inside out, twisting our everyday world into unsettling tales that straddle the line between horror, dark fantasy, and the weird.

This is a dark, beautiful collection that is a must read for horror fans. Each story is great, but five really stood out for me: TEN THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE TEN QUESTIONS, THE TOWER PRINCESSES, SKIN LIKE HONEY AND LACE, AND HER SMILE WILL UNTETHER THE UNIVERSE, and THE LAZARUS BRIDE. I will definitely be seeking out more by the author.