Tour de Force (Division One #4) By Stephanie Osborn

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Alpha One is participating in Omega’s very first First Contact diplomatic operation. Unfortunately, it’s going to split up the team—the Cortians, a race from the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, have stringent requirements, and that narrows down the list of “candidate exchange students” to...Echo. ONLY Echo. PGLEIA’s top Division One Agent, the man being groomed to be the next Director...and Omega’s partner. A plum assignment, for the pick of the crop.

But Omega doesn’t see it that way, though she can't—or won't—explain why. She is determined to stop the mission from going forward. At any cost.

Why is Omega trying to scuttle a diplomatic mission? What is she seeing that more experienced Agents aren’t? Why won’t the others listen? Is something bigger, more menacing, happening to her—to them? Will—CAN—Alpha One survive? Tour de Force (Division One #4)

I obtained a review copy of this book from the author.
People from the South don't talk like people anywhere else, and I'm going to include Texas in that generalization. However, if you look at the dialogue in most books, you'd never know that there were any regional differences.
Stephanie Osborn has an EXCELLENT ear for dialogue. Her people converse in the cadences I've heard all my life, and I'm not talking about just hanging out on playgrounds, either. I spent a disproportionate number of years in colleges and universities, and three more in the Army, so I've heard a LOT of conversations going on from people all over the country. Osborn nails speech by humans, and does it better than anyone else. I wonder, though, how long it took her to teach her word-processing program not to highlight her dialect as spelling errors?

Division One's Team Alpha One has a series of crisis events to overcome. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the book did NOT stretch out the first FIGHTING crisis, which was the second (or third) total crisis, to the end of the book. Instead, it provides the setup for the next crisis events.

However, more important than gunfire and stun rays is the nature of the first crisis. Agent Omega has a hunch that if Agent Echo gets onboard an alien first-contact vessel, his life will be over. The crisis is that Echo won't believe her; he thinks she is sulking because she can't go into space. It speaks to a lack of trust.

And...strange things...are happening with Omega, as well. She's having very vivid dreams.

Lack of trust, in a nutshell, defines the sum total of the problems that Echo and Omega are having: they aren't trusting each other, and they aren't talking about the things that are most important. These are two people who are brilliant and talented in every way, and everybody around them has seen them falling in love from the beginning, but they are still afraid to talk about it with each other, for fear it will risk their professional relationship. Well, come on, guys. This is the fourth book. Kindle Edition Just keeps getting better. Loving these characters and the storytelling Kindle Edition