15 years ago Lia Porter saw a woman jump from a bridge. Present day a woman’s skeleton is found submerged beneath the bridge.
Famous stunt driver Kaden Vaughn comes to the town of Pike. He thinks the skeleton is his dead brother’s girlfriend who disappeared 15 years ago. Lia and Kaden team up and investigate the case that the mayor filling in as sheriff will not.
Small town secrets are exposed and bodies start piling up.
This was a great book I raced through. It was very suspenseful.
Thanks NetGalley and Kensington Books for this ARC that will be released February 21, 2023!

I’m a longtime reader of Alexandra Ivy & usually auto-buy anything she puts out because I can depend on the book to be well written, thought provoking, and with a dash of intrigue. This book met the standard I’ve come to expect from AI. Bones are found & Lia is immediately brought back to the night she saw a woman running in the direction of where the bones are located some 15 (I think) years later. And then we’re introduced to Kaden who arrives in town because he believes those bones may belong to his deceased brother’s fiancée. There’s plenty of intrigue, lots of finger pointing to figure out who the true culprit is, both then and now. I will admit that, while I liked the book, it took me over a week to finish the book whereas I normally finish a book of this length within 2 days of beginning. I can’t pinpoint one particular thing that missed the mark for me with this one, but the overall story felt a tad disjointed, like it was just missing that one thing that would bring it all together. Overall I’d give it a 3/5 rating but would I re-read as I often do? No.

When she was a teenager Lia witnesses a woman jumping off a bridge. She never tells anyone because she had snuck out for a party. When a body is found under the bridge Lia feels guilty because she didn’t help the woman. The Mayor, acting sheriff, seems to want to stop any investigation into what happened to the woman. Kayden shows up in town because he thinks the body may be that of his deceased brother fiancé. The investigation becomes more and more dangerous because someone obviously wants them to stop asking questions. There are a lot of secrets in this little town and more bodies are piling up. Can Kaiden and Lia figure out what’s going on. This book will grab you from the first page. It has plenty of suspense, romance and a few twists along the way. Thank you to net galley for an advanced readers copy.

Sometimes multiple books into a thriller series it gets boring and repitive but this wasn't the ase with Desperate Acts. This is the fourth book in this series and while some recaps were requried for me to remember all the details I didn't spend the entire time feeling like I was rereading a book I'd already finished.
The characters were interesting and really moved the story forward in a unique and engaging way and for me the thrills were real.

I have read and enjoyed Alexandra Ivy’s paranormal romance, but this was my first Pike, WI book. Overall, the story was okay, but not great. The more I read, the more farfetched it seemed to get. There were multiple deaths/accidents and no one in the very small town thought it was odd, other than the main characters and one deputy? I found the main characters a little flat also. The mystery had some twists I didn’t see coming which kept the ending interesting.

Thank you to NetGalley, Kensington Books, Zebra, and Alexandra Ivy for the e-ARC.

Awesome read! But I expected no less from this author! When a body is discovered in Pike, it brings back some horrible memories for Lia, memories of seeing a young woman running and jumping from the bridge. Could it be the same person? Kaden comes to town to see if the body is his brothers missing fiancé. Together Lia and Kaden set out to solve a mystery.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own

This was another thrilling ride from Alexandra Ivy! And once again, I couldn’t figure out “who done it” until it was revealed close to the end!

Here we are back in Pike, Wisconsin! Lia Porter witnessed someone jumping off of a railroad bridge 15 years ago and a set of bones has now been found. Everyone believes it is Vanna Zimmerman, an EPA Agent who “disappeared” 15 years ago!

Vanna was engaged to Darren, Kaden Vaughn’s brother and after her disappearance Darren never stopped looking for her. Kaden sees a post on the internet about a skeleton found in Pike, Wisconsin and feels the least he can do is go to Pike and see if the remains are Vanna’s.

There is an instant attraction on both sides when Kaden and Lia meet for the first time. They decide to do some amateur sleuthing to see if they can figure out whether it is Vanna or not. Along the way, more people are killed and no one can seem to figure out who is killing all of these people!

As the story gets closer to the end…Lia gets hurt by a brick being thrown at her and Kaden just wants to whisk her away so she’s safe. The plot thickens when they discover that a child had been born and the child was given to another woman to raise…but whose child is it? Who raises this child? All is revealed at the end and what a surprise!

I loved this book! Intrigue, murder, romance….it has it all! Once you start reading it you won’t be able to put it down! Perhaps YOU can figure out “who done it!”

When Lia was a teenager she saw what looked like a women jumping off a bridge, but when she went searching she didn’t see anything. Years later a group of teenage boys found bones under that same location. Then a Hollywood Stunt Man arrives in town saying his brother’s fiancé went missing fifteen years ago and he thinks the bones are hers. This is the fourth book in the Pike Wisconsin series by Alexandra Ivy and I have loved them all. I highly recommend these books if you like mysteries and thrillers. Thanks to Netgalley for this Arc.

Back to Pike, Wisconsin! One night 15 years ago Lia Porter saw a woman running away from something/someone in terror. When a woman’s body is found years later near the spot she last saw the woman, she puts two and two together. Kayden Vaughn hears news of the body found in Pike, and believes she was his brother’s fiancee who went missing around the same time. And he comes to town determined to figure out what happened to her so many years ago. He teams up with Lia to try and find the truth.

I am a big fan of Alexandra Ivy’s romantic suspense novels. She usually puts together a complicated mystery along with a romance that really hooks me. She’s been able to build complex characters with interwoven stories. I haven’t had so much luck with the Pike Wisconsin series.

This visit to Pike was good, but not great. The mystery felt a bit soft, there were some plot holes, and not as much development of the suspects and even the victim. And on the romance side, the relationship between Lia and Kayden felt instalove/instalusty. Which was disappointing because they seemed like really great characters. I think I wanted a bit more burn and a lot more romance from them. I was also pretty surprised to find a single fade to black sex scene

Overall this was a fun and quick read, but not necessarily something I’ll pick up as a reread (like some of Alexandra Ivy’s other books).

Read and reviewed this Advanced Reader Copy from NetGalley.

What a action packed creepy small town mystery. T
No matter what this author writes she grabs you and won’t let go.

Kaden goes to Pike, Wisconsin when the skeletal remains of a woman is found there. His brother’s fiancé disappeared 15 years ago.

“This is Kaden Vaughn. The best motorcycle stuntman of all time.”

Lia Porter saw something that night 15 years ago that has haunted her.

The sickness at dredging up the disturbing memory was forgotten as she clutched the edge of the desk in a tight grip. She’d waited fifteen years to put a name with the woman who’d haunted her dreams.

With the sheriff gone and people in the town covering up a crime at all cost this makes for one crazy wild adventure.

With a little bit of romance on the side it’s a perfect romantic suspense.

“Why do you doubt I was a rebel?” “Because you look like an angel.” Oh. Her heart fluttered.

Desperate Acts by Alexandra Ivy is book #4 in the Pike, Wisconsin series. Lia Porter never suspected that what she saw sneaking home in the middle of the night, after an unauthorized high school beer bash, would come back to haunt her years later. But then a skeleton was discovered by a couple of teens. Could it be related to "that" night?

Retired stunt rider Kaden Vaugh traveled to Pike, Wisconsin after hearing about the skeleton that was discovered and seeing a picture of it. Kaden's sure this is his deceased brother's fiancee Vanna who disappeared fifteen years ago. Lia and Kaden join together to get answers. What a wild ride their investigation entails!

I loved the suspense and action in this story. The characters are very likable and I just had to keep turning the pages until the end. This is a super addition to the series.

This series keeps getting better and Lia and Kayden had me completely invested. There were several twists to keep me guessing. The romance was full of chemistry. The mystery was full of intrigue. I read it in one sitting. Highly recommend!

Read this in one day, it was so good. Had me hooked from the first page.
Lia seen a lady jump off a bridge when she was a teen. Many years later, bones are found.
Is it the same woman she seen. The sheriff is out of town so the mayor is acting sheriff. And does a very poor job of it.
Kaden sees the news and thinks he may know who the lady was. He goes to Pike and meets Lia.
I loved seeing those two interact with each other and try to solve the mystery.
This was full of suspense and action. Loved every page. Many thanks to Netgalley for the chance to read and review this one.

I'm starting to think Pike, Wisconsin is sitting on top of cursed land. Good thing there are good people to root out the evil. Lia is amazing and it was fate that she and Kaden meet to figure out this mystery. Their chemistry is a shining light in a dark winter and they will stop at nothing to find the truth. A fantastic thriller from the beginning until the very end.

Creeping home from a forbidden party in Pike, Wisconsin when you're fifteen shouldn't still haunt your dreams fifteen years later but Lia Porter has never forgotten that cold winter night or the terror she saw in a stranger's eyes. So, when skeletal remains are found near the spot she remembers so vividly Lia hopes the truth might help her sleep easier. Ex-stunt driver Kaden Vaughn thinks he knows who has just been discovered but the local store owner seems to be the only person interested in the truth. Maybe together they can solve the mysteries of the past before they too disappear without trace.

This is book four in author Alexandra Ivy’s series set in Pike, Wisconsin but can be read as a standalone. It was a little too stereotypical for my liking in certain ways but the actual reasons for the original crime were anything but and saved it from a lower rating.

I was able to read an advanced copy of this book thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the opinions expressed are my own. If you enjoyed the first three books then this is for you but overall it wasn't for me, unfortunately.

You saw something fifteen years ago but you were too afraid to say anything. Now a body has been found but the mayor doesn’t want to hear about anything that Lia wants to tell him. And now that Kaden has arrived in town things start heating up. He needs to find out if the skeleton is the woman that his brother never gave up looking for. He needs to find out the truth as the town is hiding deadly secrets. With them helping each other to uncover the truth their attraction grows stronger. Will they be able to find the proof that they need before someone dies? Do they have a future together? Lia is a strong independent woman that never let herself find love but I think that she has found the one. Kaden is a good man that just wants to find out the truth so that his brother can rest easy. They make a good couple.
This is a thrilling small town read full of twists & turns. Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC copy. This is my voluntary review. Ivy never disappoints her readers

Kaden has heard about a skeleton found in Pike WI and he thinks it might be his brothers fiancé who disappeared 15 years ago. Kaden made a promise to himself after his brother died to try and find out what happened to Vanna.
When he arrives in Pike he finds the Sheriff is on his honeymoon and the Mayor who is acting sheriff is giving him the run around. Then he meets Lia. Lia saw a women jump off the bridge where the skelton was found 15 years ago but was afraid to tell anyone because she had snuck out of the house. Now the two of them are on a quest to find out if the body is Vanna, but someone doesn't want the identity of this body told. Another great book for Ms. Ivy. thank you for the Arc copy

I want to thank #KensingtonBooks, #NetGalley for the digital ARC. This is the 4th book in the Pike, WI series by Alexandra Ivy, but it is the first one I have read. Since I hadn't read the other books in the series, I can honestly say that this book works as a stand alone book that is easily understood/followed. The story follows Pike resident Lia Porter and Hollywood stunt driver Kaden Vaughn as they try to figure out a cold case murder. They each have their connections to the skeleton that was found. The town's mayor is in charge of the sheriff's department while the sheriff is away on his honeymoon, but he seems to want to get rid of the case completely. As Lia and Kaden try and figure out the who and why's of the murders. I was able to predict who the main killer was early on in the book but still there was some stunning surprises along the way. I enjoyed this book enough to go back and read the previous books in the series.

Pike, Wisconsin is a small town with a lot of murders. Murders that may take years to come to light, as is the case with this one. This is the fourth book in the series, but I don't think it is necessary to have read the previous books. In this book it is winter, with deep snow and dangerously low temperatures, and I felt cold just reading it.

Lia Porter was a teenager when she saw a woman running desperately near an elevated railroad track. Lia was taking a shortcut in the hopes of getting home before she was missed. She never forgot that woman who looked terrified. Fifteen years later she still lives in Pike running a small store and managing her investments. Then a skeleton was found near those same tracks, and the body was wearing the distinctive jacket that Lia had noticed that night. The autopsy showed that the person was not hit by a train.

Kaden Vaughn is a Hollywood stunt driver of some renown and has come to Pike to try to discover what happened to his brother's fiance (Vanna) who disappeared years ago. His brother never got over her loss. Could this woman be his brother's missing fiance? The question is, what (or who) was the woman running from that night, and how did she die?

This is an excellent addition to a great series. I received a review copy of this book from the publisher Kensington Books via NetGalley. It was a pleasure to voluntarily read and review this book.

Something’s rotten in the town of Pike, at least according to Alexandra Ivy’s small-town series, where decades-old murder mysteries abound and townsfolk get cagey about it.

In ‘Desperate Acts’, Lia Porter unwittingly tangles with several figures of authority after revealing her involvement in a potential murder case when she was the last to have seen the victim alive and gets caught up with an unlikely visitor seeking some answers of his own. Both Lia and Karen Vaughn play at detectives; it’s a sort of amateur sleuthing that can only go so far—both of them acknowledge it as well—but what do you do then, when the straight-laced, honest ones are sorely lacking and everything else is hindered by some guilty party?

I thought the case was quite interesting when viewed ‘objectively’ in a sense up until a (somewhat cheesy and overused) point where the perpetrator spent the last bit of the book self-righteously boasting—perhaps also quite one-dimensionally—about their cleverness and deeds when things finally came to a head.
Yet both victim and perpetrator were portrayed as unlikeable and rotten and I’d actually started to think that Lia/Kaden were simply better off letting Pike stew in its own messy soup of murder mysteries.

I also wasn’t too convinced that Kaden was suddenly all into the new relationship with Lia beyond the pulsing attraction between them after just a few meetings; that it had turned so quickly to love and utter devotion by midway through had me baffled and incredulous when I thought that should have been something deeper maybe that would have tied them together.

Still, this was an easy read, delivering the body-dropping numbers with a bit of B-movie type thrills and will easily provide an entertaining night in.