• Age: 16 to 18
• Grade: 11 to 12

Set against the backdrop of the 1980s California punk scene, Love You Like Suicide explores the dark side of growing up. Author Jo Treggiari writes frankly about a period in her youth when she was addicted to drugs and living in a derelict neighbourhood. After a near-fatal accident, Jo is determined to clean up and start a fresh, new life. But there’s one thing she can’t leave behind: a tender friendship, on the brink of being lost forever. Love You Like Suicide is a gritty, true account of an adolescent who struggles against the odds to make a better life for herself.

Jo Treggiari was born in London, England, and raised in Canada. She spent many years in Oakland, California, and New York, where she trained as a boxer, wrote for a punk magazine, and owned a gangster rap/indie rock record label. Her novel Ashes, Ashes, a YA post-apocalyptic adventure published by Scholastic Press, was a multiple award nominee and bestseller. Her acclaimed novella Love You Like Suicide, appeared in the Fierce Ink Press anthology Becoming Fierce: Teen Stories IRL and as a limited edition of the long-running zine Cometbus. Her most recent YA novels are Blood Will Out, a psychological thriller, published by Penguin Teen (2018), and a second thriller, The Grey Sisters (Penguin Teen, 2019), which was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary award and was shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis award.

Jo Treggiari's profile page