Coming-of-Age; Young Adult Literature
There's nothing like a baby to make you grow up super fast. For Sam, his impending fatherhood makes him fast-forward through his adolescence into adulthood before he even reaches his eighteenth birthday. We're calling this one a coming-of-age novel because Sam and Alicia aren't quite adults when the story starts but they're forced to become them before the book ends.
As for the young adult lit genre, this is the story of a teenager dealing with one of the biggest problems a teen can encounter: becoming a parent. Are there adults in the mix? Yeah, but they really aren't major players. This is the story of Sam and Alicia, and with them at the heart of the plot, Slam is definitely written with teen readers in mind. So look for this one on the YA shelves of your local library.