is this a free attack? if so then i think it is worth it and if not i don't think its worth it. what are your thoughts on hand bow, how do you play with it?

No this is not a free attack.
You use it how you would use any other weapon, with the limitation that you can do it only once per turn.
The difference is that this weapon counts as a trinket and does not "use up your hands".

--> You can equip this ranged weapon even if you already have 2x 1hand weapons or 1x 2hand weapon.

4 hours ago, ATM2100 said:

if so then i think it is worth it and if not i don't think its worth it. what are your thoughts on hand bow, how do you play with it?

Two powerful uses for the Handbow:

1) Activates Treasure Hunter's Sleight of Hand ability without needing to attack with an exotic weapon (Handbow equip is enough)

2) Deal one additional bonus damage when using Silhouette's heroic ability on an 'X' result

You can even combine these two cases for even more bang for your buck. Outside of these though, it has very limited use.

ill take your word for it but i don't have any of those cards aside from hand bow.

22 minutes ago, ATM2100 said:

ill take your word for it but i don't have any of those cards aside from hand bow.

If you don't have Silhouette or the Treasure Hunter class then you'll rarely want to spend the gold on this item.

In most cases it is simply too weak of an attack to even be worth using as a backup ranged weapon, especially come Act II. Also, you can rarely afford using a trinket slot on it.