Priest Content Notes
Priest
This book contains mentions of clerical sex abuse (off page, historical) and a sister’s death by suicide.
Midnight Mass
This book contains mentions of clerical sex abuse (off page, historical) and a sister’s death by suicide.
A central character experiences a miscarriage. This occurs in Chapter Twelve, and its consequences continue through Chapter Thirteen.
Sinner
This book contains mentions of clerical sex abuse (off page, historical) and a sister’s death by suicide.
There is a scene in Chapter 20, where a secondary character makes racist assumptions about a central character. This is called out and addressed in the chapter, but this chapter can also be skipped and its events inferred from later chapters.
Additionally, themes of cancer and mortality pervade the book. There is a parental death from cancer described in Chapters 30 and 31.
Saint
The main character of this book has a history of depression, and his experience with suicidal ideation before his diagnosis is described in Chapter Forty-Seven. This chapter can be skipped, and its meaning inferred from the rest of the story.
This book also contains brief mentions of sexual abuse of a child by a Catholic priest and a sister’s death by suicide. The abuse and death take place before the events of the story.
Devil
Mental Health: a main character with generalized anxiety; disparaging remarks about a secondary character whose choices potentially stem from untreated mental illness; referenced difficult mental healthcare experiences for a mother and sister in an ER setting years before the story starts (Chapter 20); positive depiction of inpatient care (Chapter 42); brief, non-specific references to a secondary character’s past drug and alcohol dependencies; extremely complicated feelings from a main character around a deceased parent who’d had mental illness; a main character who overhears conjecture about his potential diagnoses as a child, recalled briefly in the present.
Self-Harm: scattered moments of passive and nonspecific suicidal ideation; three moments of inaction that could be considered suicidal (Chapter 9 [re: thinking about waiting for a flood to reach her], Chapter 10 [re: potential infection], Chapter 42 [re: severe weather]); scattered references to a protagonist’s sister who died by suicide twenty years before the story starts (the aftermath is described in some detail in Chapters 26 and 38); references to a protagonist’s mother who died by drowning eighteen years before the story starts (discussed but not depicted in Chapter 38 and Chapter 42) and whose drowning is considered a suicide by the protagonist even though it was officially ruled an accident.
Sexual Content: Pervasive dubious consent; consensual somnophilia; a consensual and planned free-use arrangement; demeaning language from MMC to FMC during sex (enjoyed by the FMC).
Sexual Violence: References to a protagonist’s sister who experienced clerical abuse—this occurs twenty years before the story starts and is not depicted. Non-specific references to systemic clerical abuse in the Church. There are mentions of implied (but not described) intimate partner violence and sexual assault experienced during sex work—both relating to a secondary character.
Violence: Stalking by the MMC; nonconsensual recording of FMC by MMC; a brief depiction of domestic violence between two sisters (Chapter 9). Death of the FMC’s father and grandparents in a highway accident thirteen years before the start of the story. An assault on the FMC by her sister’s ex-boyfriend that results in broken fingers—this happens three years before the present day but is briefly discussed in Chapters 11, 33 and 42) .
Other: Characters that meet when the MMC is a fourth-year college student and the FMC is his lecturer; home loss (severe weather); lack of healthcare coverage; poverty; a secondary character who experiences early pregnancy loss as a teenager off-page and twenty years before the start of the book (referenced but not depicted).