"Producing a definitive list of the best books of 2021 is, by its very definition, an impossible task. It's impossible every year, if we're honest, but any author who has managed to create and release a book over the past couple of years should be given a medal straight away. It's a hard enough task when the world isn't on fire, and yet the publishing industry has not ground to a halt, and authors have found the strength to just keep going.
A list like this is only ever the opinions of one person (or three, in our case) and therefore that is all readers should take from it – recommendations and opinions from people who have read a lot of books and want to share the ones that they have loved. But please know that even if this list of the best books of 2021 was written once a week for the whole year, it still wouldn't include every book that might deserve a place on it."
