A beautifully crafted debut from one of the brightest young stars of American cinema. There's nothing more exhilarating than falling in love for the first time. And nothing more confusing...'William is 20; sexy, confident and easy. Then he meets Sarah and falls in love, and his confidence and ease, upon which his sexiness rests, are called into question. Sarah is troubled, obviously so, but William is so besotted he fails to notice or to care...Obsessive first love is an enduring - and difficult - subject for first-time novelists, but Hawke has managed to encapsulate well the characteristics of a love affair doomed by one-sidedness and the psychological breakdown which follows it...His writing is searingly open; his prose, full of freshness of love and the agony of loss, is beguiling. The Hottest State captures beautifully the awfulness of being captured.' Mary Loudon, The Times