A fairly decent graphic memoir about using improvisational comedy as a way to confront and mend cycles of anxiety and depression loses me when it gets bogged down in showing every single improv exercise the author ever did with re-enactments of scenes she found most memorable. All the improv comes at the expense of seeing how she is handling daily life and interacting with people outside the improv class. She lives with her parents, for instance, but they are barely there non-entities. Heck, even her improv classmates are little more than their names.

In the end it comes off as more an improv textbook than a personal story. ( )

Great message relayed in this book: it’s ok to fail forward. The memoir part of the story was good, learning about how the author overcame paralyzing social anxiety through improv. Kind of felt like an “improv for dummies” book. Definitely geared towards an older audience. ( )

Improve is a graphic memoir that takes the reader on a journey through the author's experience with anxiety, and how improv classes helped them. While this is a book marketed to teens, as an adult dealing with anxiety, there's a lot that an older audience can gain from this read, too. The artwork is fantastic and captures emotion wonderfully, which is important considering the subject matter. Most importantly, though, Graudins outlines numerous exercises for readers to do without requiring formalized classes, which is a fantastic way to break down barriers to access: not every teen has access to a local or school theatre, and this book puts those exercises directly in their hands and tells them that they can do it, too.

Thank you to First Second and NetGalley for providing a copy for review. ( )