A review by samanthafondriest
The Madness Blooms (unpublished) by Mackenzi Lee

5.0

The Madness Blooms follows Lena, an orphaned seed shop assistant, who doesn't quite feel comfortable in a feminine body or society's expectations for women. When the shop owner dies unexpectedly and leaves Lena and her brother, Bas, in huge amounts of debt, Lena develops a scheme to become Pim, a real person who has been detained in another country, and sell a non-existent tulip bulb to a wealthy local man and his daughter, Elsje. Complicating matters is the fact that Pim has fallen in love with Elsje - which is punishable by death. While inhabiting the persona of Pim, he realizes he has finally found his identity as a man. Threading through the novel is the absolute absurdity of the tulip madness - perhaps the oddest economic bubble to ever happen. The Madness Blooms elegantly addresses gender and sexual identity in the context of Holland in 1637 - it has both authentic representation and historical accuracy. As a warning - there are traumatic things that happen to LGBTQ+ people in this novel because those things are historically accurate and reflect how people would have been punished in that time and place. Obviously this book isn’t condoning these things; it is shining a light on all the people who suffered in silence when openly living as gay or trans wasn’t legal. However, if you would find this upsetting, then this may not be the book for you. The MC starts out referring to himself as Lena and uses feminine pronouns because the concept of living as a man isn’t even a feasible option to him in this time and place - he doesn’t even fully realize his own gender identity until he lives as Pim for a while. He does have an ally who accepts him as he is and that dynamic is wonderful to watch develop. I finished this book in one sitting because I couldn't put it down. This is an original, fast read, and won't disappoint fans of Lee's Montague Siblings series who have been clamoring for more LGBTQ+ historical fiction.