Torn

Murphy continues the Billionaire Bachelors Club series (after Crave), about three men who make a million-dollar bet on who will remain single the longest, with a brief and unsatisfying second installment. Gage Emerson, a 28-year-old real estate hustler, alternates narrative duties with love interest Marina Knight, but the characters' voices are indistinguishable, down to identical slang and grammatical errors. Marina is the 23-year-old manager of a bakery, one of many businesses owned by her prominent "land-rich and cash-poor" Napa Valley clan. Both have ulterior motives: Gage wants to buy property from Marina's father, and Marina wants a posh hotel run by Gage's best friend, Archer, to sell her family's desserts. Though each expresses periodic guilt about these conflicts of interest, they continue to pursue them and each other, which renders the characters unsympathetic and their romance questionable. A few explicit encounters ramp up the steam, but Gage and Marina's connection never convinces. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.