I thought this book would be good. It was NOT. The End.

A book should be judged on its own merit, but I don't think I can do that with this one. Take my review with a grain of salt because I'm comparing it to a masterpiece.

A couple months ago I read A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is one of those books you eat, sleep, and breathe, not just for the duration of time you're reading it, but for months after. I'm still immersed in that book. I miss reading it.

I think I decided to read A Separate Peace mainly because it sounds similar. It often appears on "books you need to read" lists but until now, I thought it sounded boring. The reason it no longer sounded boring? Its similarity to A Prayer for Owen Meany:

Setting: New England, private boy's school. Teenage boy narrates. His entire life was defined by the events with his best friend that he writes about. There's a war going on. Innocence lost.

That's where the similarity ends. While A Separate Peace is good, it's not A-Prayer-for-Owen-Meany good. It didn't live up and I knew it wouldn't but had to try anyway. 

Though it's only a third of the length, this book felt so much longer. It dragged. It's introspective and I like that in novels, but it just didn't seem to go anywhere.  It's pretty much Gene the narrator working out his confused feelings towards his friend Phineas and sorting through his guilt about what happened in the summer before their final year of school. 

Had I not constantly been comparing this to a better book, maybe I would have liked it more. Impossible to say.