Beauty Queen by Linda Glovach

() This is similar in style to Go Ask Alice, edited by Beatrice Sparks. A girl of 19 moves away from her alcoholic mother, gets a job as a topless dancer, and become addicted to heroin. Which she dies at the hands of, as well. There is also a story of a failed romance, which sparks the ending overdose.

The story was easy to read and was written like a journal. From the quote printed on the back cover, it sounds like the author was once a heroin addict herself. Though this was obviously not her story. I finished the whole thing within 3 hours or so.

Surviving Sam by Karen Rivers

() A quite shaking first-person perspective of depression and grief.
The narrator, Pagan, was the twin sister of Sam. Sam dangled on the edge of Pagan's suspension rope during a treacherous avalanche. He fell and died. Pagan broke some bones, lost an eye, and lived. She's now trying to live three years later with an immense burden of guilt and pain. She's tried to kill herself eight times already. She feels she is on her last, ninth, life.
This story takes a very deep look inside the disturbing mind of mentally unsound individuals. But it is careful not to dehumanize their experience, and makes it easy for any non-medicated or therapy-focused individual to also relate. It emphasizes the will for human survival but also the intense amounts of hidden human suffering we witness (and may experience) everyday.