Andres Ulloa
You may fall in to the trap of describing "A Separate Peace" as a "coming of age story set in the WWII era", but you would then also downplay the masterful crafting of the story. This story does not just tell of a boy becoming a man, but of a boy who has an eery friendship with a true gem of a person. By gem of a person I mean one who is so inconceivably true to himself that you rarely encounter them. Example in popular literature is a character like a Dean Moriarty, a Zorba, a Gatsby, a Charlie(perks), or a Tyler Durden. To reiterate, this story is not of a transformation of a boy to a man, but the absorption of a gem by a boy. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and I'm certain it'll come to mind whenever I see someone change to be more like someone else.