Sage Creek

Fans of Gregory (Wolf River) excited to see her first solo effort in four years will be disappointed by a paint-by-numbers premise and paper-thin villain. Divorc%C3%A9e Sophie McPhee comes home to tiny Lonesome Way, Mont. Determined to ignore the elderly townswomen who want to marry her off, she plans to focus on opening a new bakery. Then she encounters her onetime crush, rancher Rafe Tanner, a single father trying to keep his 11-year-old daughter's life stable. Despite their intentions, Rafe and Sophie fall in love, interrupted by a cowboy jealous of both. Sophie's touching backstory mitigates Rafe's cookie-cutter history, but a false note is struck by Sophie's overreaction to her widowed mother's new boyfriend, who Sophie irrationally assumes is a bully like her father. Both leads are well rendered and deserve better than this skimpy plot. (Oct.)