Plot Summary
Prologue
Five years after leaving Elijah Iverson2 to become a monk, Brother Patrick (once Aiden Bell)1 sits watching Elijah2 pray shirtless on a Provençal mountainside, both of them transformed since their last goodbye. The narrator1 confesses he never stopped loving him, even as Elijah2 has become a monk of a different sort himself, chanting psalms in a monastery courtyard.
The scene frames the entire story as a memory: a love that survived monastery vows, distance, and years of silence, told from a future vantage point where both men have already lived through everything the book is about to reveal.
The prologue functions as a promise to the reader: whatever anguish follows, these two men end up together, tangled in devotion to each other and to God simultaneously. By opening with Aiden's hunger for Elijah's body even mid-prayer, Simone signals the book's central thesis, that eroticism and sacred devotion are not opposites but a continuum. The framing also establishes an unreliable sense of inevitability, tempting the reader to wonder how impossible obstacles (vows, an engagement, an ocean) get dissolved into this quiet, sun warmed intimacy.
A Monk's Unwanted Visitor
Five years after Aiden Bell1 left Kansas City to become Brother Patrick1 at Mount Sergius Abbey, his ex boyfriend Elijah Iverson2 appears in the cloister during Aiden's1 vow of silence. Elijah,2 now a magazine writer, has come to tell Aiden1 face to face that he is engaged to a man named Jamie.5
Aiden,1 forbidden from speaking, can only absorb the news in silence, remembering the night five years earlier when he vanished from Elijah's2 life without explanation to join the monastery. Elijah2 accuses Aiden1 of choosing God over him and leaves in tears. That same day, Abbot Jerome3 had offered Aiden1 a research trip to scout Trappist monasteries in Europe, since Aiden1 has been craving a harder, more ascetic life than Mount Sergius offers.
This opening collides two unresolved wounds: Aiden's abandonment of Elijah and his restless dissatisfaction with his own vocation. Elijah's engagement announcement is less about closure than provocation, an attempt to force feeling from a man who has trained himself into silence. The scene establishes the book's core tension between vowed devotion and erotic longing, while the abbot's parallel offer of a discernment trip plants the mechanism that will force Aiden and Elijah into proximity again.
Elijah Becomes His Houseguest
Weeks later, Elijah2 returns to Mount Sergius, this time assigned by Abbot Jerome3 to write a magazine feature on monastic brewing, with Aiden1 as his official host because of their family connection through Aiden's1 brother Sean,6 who is married to Elijah's2 sister Zenny.11 A flooded guesthouse forces Elijah2 into the monk dormitory, in the cell beside Aiden's1 own.
Over the following days, Aiden1 guides Elijah2 through prayers, brewery tours, and meals, all while suppressing his caged desire. Tension breaks during a fight in Aiden's1 beloved hermitage, when Elijah2 accuses him of using monasticism as a selfish escape from real world responsibility, storming out before their lips can meet under a swarm of cloister fireflies that same night.
Proximity becomes the engine of temptation, but the emotional crux is Elijah's accusation that monastic withdrawal is a privileged abdication rather than virtue. This argument forces Aiden to defend a life he has never had to justify to an outsider, and the near kiss under fireflies reveals that neither has moved on despite years of separation. The chastity cage, introduced here, becomes a physical symbol of a devotion that is beginning to strain against its own architecture.
A Kiss in the Rain
After apologizing for his harshness at the hermitage, Elijah2 reveals that his fiance Jamie5 will visit the abbey that afternoon. Aiden1 endures watching Jamie,5 a genuinely kind librarian, hold Elijah's2 hand in the beer garden, then overhears the two of them through his cell wall that night.
The next day, caught together again in the rain inside the hermitage, Aiden1 and Elijah2 finally kiss, and it escalates into oral sex before Jamie's5 ringtone interrupts them. Elijah2 flees in visible horror at his own infidelity. Days later, Elijah2 packs up and leaves Mount Sergius early without saying goodbye, having ended his engagement to Jamie5 after admitting the affair to him.
This is the irrevocable line crossed: Aiden breaks his celibacy vow and, by extension, Elijah breaks his engagement. The interrupting phone call literalizes the intrusion of the outside world (and Jamie, a genuinely decent man) into their reignited affair, making clear that their happiness is built on someone else's real pain. Aiden's confession to his abbot afterward shows a man trying to hold himself accountable within a structure that has no adequate category for what he is feeling.
Elijah Joins the Pilgrimage
Instead of ending things, Abbot Jerome3 grants Elijah2 permission to accompany Aiden1 on his three week tour of European Trappist monasteries, framing it as further research for Elijah's magazine article. The two fly to Belgium to visit Semois Abbey, where despite awkward silence and Elijah's2 palpable restlessness, they revisit old memories and their physical chemistry reignites.
In the abbey's overgrown ruins, they act out an explicit roleplaying fantasy about a desperate monk, and that night Elijah2 sneaks into Aiden's1 room for another encounter. Aiden1 begins to feel the trip is less a discernment of his vocation and more an extension of the affair, even as he insists to himself that he still intends to become a stricter monk than ever.
The abbot's decision to allow Elijah on the trip is a quiet but critical enabling choice, suggesting the Church figures around Aiden already sense his path may not end in solemn vows. Belgium introduces the roleplay device that recurs throughout the book: fantasy as a safe container for real desire, letting both men voice longing they cannot yet claim as sincere. The chapter tracks Aiden's growing self deception, performing devotion to celibacy while actively dismantling it.
Lavender Fields, Full Surrender
At Our Lady of the Fountains abbey in Provence, Aiden1 throws himself into the lavender harvest alongside the monks while continuing his secret liaison with Elijah2 in ancient chapels and pagan grottoes. Elijah2 reveals he has broken off his engagement to Jamie5 for good, and the two exchange declarations of love for the first time since their reunion, admitting they never stopped loving each other.
Aiden1 begins to feel that his happiest, most spiritually alive moments now come from holding both God and Elijah2 simultaneously, contradicting years of believing celibacy was necessary for holiness. A visiting American priest, Father Jordan,7 unsettles Aiden1 by hinting he already knows the truth about Elijah2 without being told.
Provence functions as the emotional midpoint, where Aiden briefly achieves the synthesis the book has been building toward: sex and prayer as complementary rather than competing devotions. The mutual love confession raises the stakes considerably, converting a fling into an acknowledged relationship, while Father Jordan's uncanny awareness foreshadows a later revelation and signals that institutional Catholicism itself contains more flexibility than Aiden has allowed himself to imagine.
The Farmhouse Confession
On the train toward Ireland, Elijah2 presses Aiden1 about the real reason he fled to the monastery, revealing he'd long assumed it was because of a fight the couple had the night Aiden1 disappeared.
In a graveyard at St. Columba's, the stark Irish abbey Aiden1 has idealized as his ultimate spiritual destination, Aiden1 finally tells Elijah2 the full truth: a lifelong companion he calls It, a personification of suicidal depression rooted in his sister Lizzy's12 death, had nearly convinced him to end his life that night, and only an anonymous 3 a.m. text quoting Psalm 121 saved him and sent him to Mount Sergius instead. Elijah2 is devastated he never knew, and their intimacy afterward feels less like transgression and more like communion.
This is the novel's true emotional climax, recontextualizing Aiden's entire monastic vocation as a survival mechanism rather than a simple romantic betrayal. The mystery text message becomes a quiet miracle motif, and revealing it here, at the literal edge of Ireland, ties Aiden's geography of desperation (wanting the harshest, bleakest monastery) to a desire for punishment rather than genuine calling. Elijah's grief at not knowing sooner reframes their whole history as mutual, compounding misunderstanding rather than simple abandonment.
The Offer to Leave
Newly certain after the graveyard confession, Aiden1 tells Elijah2 in an abandoned cliffside cottage that he wants to leave monastic life altogether and be with him without secrecy. Elijah2 is stunned and moved but hesitant, questioning whether Aiden1 truly wants this or is only reacting to guilt and infatuation. They make love with unusual tenderness, and Aiden1 believes the matter is settled.
But the next morning, Elijah2 has vanished from St. Columba's without saying goodbye, leaving behind a letter explaining that he refuses to let Aiden1 sacrifice a hard won, spiritually vital life for him, insisting he cannot compete with, in his words, fireflies in the cloister, and that Aiden1 must stay a monk to remain whole.
Elijah's departure inverts the earlier pattern, now he is the one disappearing to protect someone he loves, mirroring Aiden's original flight from him five years prior. His refusal reveals a mature, self sacrificing love, but also his own unresolved insecurity about ever measuring up against Aiden's relationship with God. The letter's fireflies metaphor crystallizes the entire novel's central dilemma: is devotion inherently zero sum, or can love expand rather than divide?
Building a New Well
Back at Mount Sergius, grieving and confused, Aiden1 confides in his mentor Brother Connor4 and his brother Tyler,8 a former priest, about his impossible bind: leaving for Elijah2 feels dishonest to his calling, but staying feels like permanent exile from his heart.
Brother Connor4 reframes the problem, insisting there are many paths to God beyond the binary of monk or layperson. Reading Elijah's published magazine article, which closes with reflections on patience as spiritual practice, Aiden1 decides to formally leave Mount Sergius, becoming an oblate connected loosely to the abbey while pursuing an unconventional ministry, joining Father Jordan's7 project of creating new sacramental spaces outside the celibate vowed tradition, unbound by Rome's rigid categories.
This section resolves the novel's theological argument, that authentic faith requires imaginative reconstruction rather than resignation to available categories. Aiden's choice to become an oblate while building new ministry alongside Father Jordan honors both his genuine spiritual formation and his refusal to sacrifice human love, satisfying the book's insistence that devotion should multiply rather than compete. It also positions him, for the first time, as an active co creator of meaning rather than someone simply obeying or fleeing existing structures.
Jamie's Unexpected Blessing
While Aiden1 waits to reconnect with Elijah,2 his ex fiance Jamie5 visits Mount Sergius unannounced, bringing homemade muffins and an unexpectedly generous message: he suspected long before the affair that Elijah's2 heart belonged elsewhere, and he doesn't want three people to remain unhappy over a love that was never fully his to keep.
Jamie5 hands Aiden1 the published magazine article and confirms Elijah2 still isn't with anyone, urging Aiden1 to stop hesitating. This encounter releases Aiden1 from residual guilt over the broken engagement and clarifies that his path forward requires patience rather than the reckless, immediate gestures that once defined the old Aiden Bell.1
Jamie's magnanimity subverts a potential love triangle cliché, refusing to let readers cast him as a mere obstacle. His clear eyed acknowledgment that Elijah's affections were always divided lets the narrative absolve Aiden and Elijah without erasing the real harm caused, modeling a mature, non punitive approach to heartbreak that contrasts with Aiden's earlier catastrophic silence and flight.
A Gala, Reprised
Months later, wearing a rented tuxedo instead of a habit, Aiden1 attends Sean's6 charity gala at the same venue where he and Elijah2 first became involved years earlier. He finds Elijah2 across the room and deliberately echoes their original flirtation, taking his champagne glass and repeating the very words that started their romance.
Alone on the same balcony where they first kissed, Aiden1 explains that he has left the monastery for good, is under psychiatric care, is helping Father Jordan7 build new inclusive spiritual community, and that Elijah2 never had to compete with God because their love only deepened his faith. Elijah,2 still frightened it is too good to be true, agrees to leave with him that night to try again.
The gala setting deliberately closes the narrative loop, transforming a scene of impulsive seduction into one of deliberate, informed commitment. Aiden's insistence that Elijah magnifies rather than competes with his relationship to God resolves the fireflies dilemma from the earlier letter, replacing scarcity logic with abundance. This is the emotional climax of the reunion arc, distinct from the earlier confession climax, giving the novel two structurally separate peaks: one of revelation, one of resolution.
Epilogue
Writing in Mode magazine, Elijah2 recounts marrying Aiden1 in a rainy October ceremony held at the same lavender adjacent countryside significance to their reunion, officiated by Aiden's1 brother Tyler,8 a former priest. Monks from Mount Sergius traveled in a group to attend, weeping openly, alongside Elijah's2 and Aiden's1 families and Sean6 and Zenny's11 five children.
Elijah2 reflects on the strangeness and rightness of marrying an ex monk, someone whose devotion to prayer and to him no longer feel like competing claims, and declares that loving Aiden1 has returned him to a sense of the sacred he had held at arm's length since young adulthood.
The epilogue confirms the novel's thesis in its final image: monks and family together celebrating a marriage that could not exist within traditional categories, yet is blessed by representatives of the very institution that once seemed to forbid it. Elijah's narration, framed once more as a magazine piece, bookends the novel's device of using his journalism to process what could not be said aloud, closing the emotional arc with earned, hard won hope rather than naive romantic resolution.
Analysis
Saint uses its unusual premise, a millionaire turned monk1 reunited with the boyfriend he abandoned2 for God, to interrogate a question more universal than its specific Catholic frame suggests: must devotion always be exclusive? The novel structures itself as a rebuttal to zero sum thinking, tracking Aiden's1 journey from believing sanctity requires emptying himself of everything but God to discovering that his love for Elijah2 has actually deepened his capacity for prayer and presence. This argument is reinforced through Brother Connor's4 insistence on many paths to the well and Father Jordan's7 project of recovering pre Reformation religious plurality, both suggesting that rigid binaries (vowed versus lay, sacred versus erotic) are historical constructions rather than spiritual necessities. The book is equally invested in depression and recovery, refusing to treat Aiden's1 suicidal crisis as backstory trivia; it becomes the emotional key that recontextualizes his entire flight from Elijah2 as self preservation rather than simple cowardice or piety, complicating any easy reading of his monastic vocation as pure faith versus escape. Jamie's5 generous, non vindictive response to being wronged deliberately avoids melodrama, modeling a version of heartbreak that includes grief without villainizing anyone, consistent with the novel's overall resistance to punitive moral frameworks. The recurring roleplay games and epistolary magazine excerpts allow desire and reflection to coexist on the page without becoming didactic, letting eroticism function as a genuine mode of theological inquiry rather than mere spice. Ultimately, the novel argues that institutions calcify around fear of ambiguity, and that authentic holiness might require the courage to build new forms rather than simply choosing between existing ones, a message as relevant to modern debates about faith, sexuality, and belonging as to its specific monastic setting.
Review Summary
Saint is a deeply emotional and beautifully written romance novel that has polarized readers. Many praise its exploration of love, religion, and mental health, finding the forbidden romance between Aiden and Elijah captivating. The book's rich prose and complex characters resonated strongly with some readers. However, others found it overly long, filled with too much religious content, and lacking in chemistry between the main characters. Despite mixed opinions, most agree that Sierra Simone's writing is powerful and thought-provoking.
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Characters
Aiden Bell / Brother Patrick
Ex millionaire turned monkA former high flying, hard partying financial executive who joined a Kansas Benedictine monastery after a near fatal night of suicidal depression. Known within the abbey as disciplined, quiet Brother Patrick, he still carries the impulsive, tender hearted, people pleasing instincts of his old self, Aiden. Driven by guilt over past selfishness and a genuine hunger for God, he throws himself into monastic austerity as both healing and penance. His central conflict is reconciling his still burning love for his ex boyfriend Elijah2 with his vocation, forcing him to question whether devotion to God and romantic love are truly incompatible or whether he has been living inside a false binary his whole adult life.
Elijah Iverson
Journalist ex boyfriendA sharp, composed magazine writer for Mode, and the older best friend of Aiden's1 brother Sean6, with whom Aiden1 fell in love years before either admitted it. Elijah left event planning for journalism after confronting workplace racism, channeling his intelligence into cultural commentary. Guarded and controlled on the surface, he masks deep vulnerability and a lifelong fear of being loved only conditionally, stemming partly from his family's rupture with the Catholic Church after childhood abuse scandal. His arc traces him from bitter, protective skepticism toward Aiden's1 monastic choice to a hard won willingness to trust that their love can coexist with, rather than compete against, Aiden's1 faith.
Abbot Jerome
Wise, warm monastery leaderThe round, bookish abbot of Mount Sergius who resembles Friar Tuck and writes footnoted scholarship on an obscure church father in his spare time. He recognizes Aiden's1 spiritual intensity early and worries it could burn him out rather than sustain him, prompting the European discernment trip. Gentle but shrewd, he repeatedly frames Aiden's1 crisis as an invitation to examine desire rather than a failure to be punished.
Brother Connor
Aiden's monastic mentorA former karate school owner turned Benedictine monk in his sixties, assigned as Aiden's1 spiritual director after conflict with another priest. Having left his own great love decades earlier to join the abbey, he offers Aiden1 nonjudgmental compassion and, crucially, the idea that there are many valid paths to God beyond strict binaries.
Jamie
Elijah's wronged fianceA kind, wholesome librarian and Sunday school teacher who becomes engaged to Elijah2 before Aiden1 re-enters the picture. Genuinely good natured and self aware, Jamie senses early that Elijah's2 heart remains divided, and ultimately responds to the affair's revelation with unusual grace rather than bitterness, refusing to let three people stay miserable.
Sean Bell
Aiden's protective older brotherAiden's1 blond, sarcastic older brother, married to Elijah's2 sister Zenny11 and father to their several small children. Fiercely loyal to Elijah2 as his oldest best friend, Sean is openly furious whenever Aiden1 risks hurting him again, providing comic relief and an outside moral compass throughout the story.
Father Jordan Brady
Mysterious visionary priestA strikingly beautiful, uncannily perceptive priest who pastors Sean6 and Zenny's11 parish and later becomes central to Aiden's1 post monastery ministry. Interested in reviving older, less rigid forms of Christian holiness outside the strict monastic or lay binary, he appears unexpectedly during the Ireland leg of the trip, hinting he already understands more about Aiden1 and Elijah's2 situation than he should.
Tyler Bell
Aiden's ex priest brotherAiden's1 older brother, a former Catholic priest who left the collar to marry his now wife, Poppy. Living out east and studying theology, Tyler serves as a long distance sounding board for Aiden's1 spiritual crisis, having navigated his own transition from vowed to lay life.
Brother Titus
Playful young monk friendA vain, blond, cheerful young monk at Mount Sergius who, along with Brother Thomas10, provides comic energy and teases Aiden1 about his past as reckless Flamin' Hot Aiden1 and his mysterious visitor.
Brother Thomas
Aiden's army veteran friendA former soldier turned monk, inseparable from Brother Titus9, who helps orchestrate lighthearted moments like the bouncy ball incident that mortifies Aiden1 in front of Elijah2.
Zenny
Elijah's sister, Sean's wifeElijah's2 younger sister, who nearly became a nun before falling for and marrying Sean6. Rarely on page directly but a steady emotional anchor for the extended family, mother to their several children.
Lizzy Bell
Aiden's deceased sisterAiden's1 late sister, who died by suicide in high school after surviving sexual abuse by their parish priest. Her death seeds Aiden's1 lifelong depression and the family's fractured relationship with the Catholic Church, resurfacing as the root of the story's darkest revelation.
Father Finbarr
Reserved Irish abbot hostThe quiet, red bearded librarian monk who hosts Aiden1 and Elijah2 at the stark, wind battered St. Columba's Abbey in Ireland, embodying the severe asceticism Aiden1 believes he wants before his understanding shifts.
Brother Xavier
Belgian abbey guideThe reserved, French speaking Trappist monk who escorts Aiden1 and Elijah2 around Semois Abbey in Belgium, the first stop of their European monastery tour.
Abbe Bernard
Provence abbey's abbotThe thoughtful French abbot of Our Lady of the Fountains in Provence, who challenges Aiden1 and Elijah2 with questions about how monastic adaptation can drift from genuine communion with God.
Plot Devices
The Chastity Cage
Symbol of suppressed desireA metal chastity device Aiden1 wears throughout his monastic years, originally purchased as a playful sex toy with Elijah2 before he left for the monastery. It becomes his tool for enforcing celibacy, its physical constraint mirroring his psychological effort to suppress lingering love. Its removal and reapplication throughout the European trip track the ebb and flow of his resolve, culminating in its permanent removal once he commits to leaving religious life for Elijah2.
The Mystery Text Message
Catalyst for Aiden's salvationAn anonymous text sent to Aiden1 at 3:28 a.m. on the night he nearly ended his life, quoting the opening line of Psalm 121, which then leads him to search for a nearby monastery and discover Mount Sergius. The sender's identity remains unknown for most of the book, giving the moment a miraculous, almost supernatural quality that anchors Aiden's1 entire vocation.
What If Games
Roleplay as emotional safety valveThroughout their reunion, Aiden1 and Elijah2 repeatedly initiate consensual roleplay scenarios beginning with the phrase what if, allowing them to voice desires and vulnerabilities too dangerous to claim directly, such as imagining alternate timelines where they stayed together or scenarios involving Aiden's1 monastic identity. The device recurs from their earliest relationship through the final proposal scene, becoming shorthand for their emotional intimacy.
Elijah's Mode Magazine Article
Framing device and turning pointElijah's2 ongoing feature story about touring Trappist breweries, excerpted throughout the book, serves as both cover for their travels and an evolving record of his changing feelings, culminating in a published piece whose closing reflection on patience directly influences Aiden's1 decision to leave monastic life. A later Mode piece also narrates the wedding in the epilogue.
The Fireflies in the Cloister
Metaphor for competing devotionA recurring image of fireflies gathering in the Mount Sergius cloister on summer nights, which Aiden1 associates with a transcendent, almost miraculous experience of God's presence. Elijah2 later uses the image in his farewell letter to argue he cannot compete with such moments, making the fireflies a shorthand throughout the book's second half for the perceived zero sum conflict between divine and romantic love, resolved only in the finale.
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