Slam by Nick Hornby

I love Nick Hornby. He never fails to make me laugh out loud like a mad woman. All of his characters just get to me and I find myself loving them even if they aren't doing the smartest or most decent things.

Sam's mother had him when she was 16 and he has planned on a different life than that. When a teacher takes him aside and suggests that he study design in college, he is excited to finally have an idea of what he wants to do. Him and his mother are close and part of that seems to be because of their closeness in age. At 15, his life consists mostly of school and skating and talking to his poster of Tony Hawk, which talks back mostly in quotes from his book.

Then Sam's mother introduces him to Alicia at a party and he thinks he's fallen in love. It's first love, young love. They spend as much time as possible together and they have sex. Lots of it. But after one little mistake, Sam finds himself in the same position his mother and father were in. At 16, Sam is going to be a dad and his mother is going to be a grandmother at 32.

The twist comes when he gets mad at his Tony Hawk poster while being a bit of a turd. He goes to sleep in his bed and wakes up... not in his bed. He wakes up a year in the future and stumbles through the day, not sure what is going on except that his lives with Alicia, has a baby named Roof, and goes to college. When he goes to bed at night, he wakes up back in his own time.

This is one of those books that is both hilarious and uncomfortable. At first I was confused by this "whizzing" into the future, as Sam calls it, but by the end of the book it all makes sense. I laughed out loud a lot, a couple of times in public. It's a story we've all heard before from a different point of view with a different twist. This is a wonderful first YA from one of my favorite authors that is definitely worth the read.