Everything But a Smile is a collection of poems that speak to acknowledgment, acceptance, and fight through the hollows and peaks of the human experience. The author, Candace D. Henry has a knack for gripping the emotions of her readers to get them to not only see the perspectives of her writings, but to feel them on a soul level. To read Everything But a Smile is to experience love, growth, pain, parenthood, friendship, abuse, societal systems, generations of assimilation, sexuality, and a life outside the norm.