Pendulum by Adam Hamdy #BookReview

About the book

You wake. Confused. Disorientated.
A noose is round your neck.
You are bound, standing on a chair.
All you can focus on is the man in the mask tightening the rope.
You are about to die.
John Wallace has no idea why he has been targeted. No idea who his attacker is. No idea how he will prevent the inevitable.
Then the pendulum of fate swings in his favour.
He has one chance to escape, find the truth and halt his destruction.
The momentum is in his favour for now.
But with a killer on his tail, everything can change with one swing of this deadly pendulum…

Published by Headline 3rd November 2016

My thoughts

I’d seen Pendulum mentioned after its release quite a few times on social media, so I was really intrigued to see what it was about. When I looked it up the first thing that struck me was the cover, it gave me the shivers so I knew I definitely wanted to read it.

Could you imagine waking up to realise that you have a noose around your neck, that the man standing in front of you with a mask and body armour has the other end and intends to hang you, no? This is how Adam Hamdy introduces us to John Wallace, the main character in the book. John doesn’t know why he has a noose around his neck or why someone is trying to kill him, hell he doesn’t even know who that someone is.

John ends up running for his life, after finding clues in the US he leaves England and travels to where he thinks he can find some answers. What really happens is an intense game of cat and mouse and a story that has you biting your nails. The characters are well developed and I didn’t actually realise when I started reading that this is book one of a trilogy so I was very pleased to know we’ll hopefully be getting more from them soon.

Hamdy opens the book with an intense scene and keeps the intensity going right through to the end. This is a fast paced book with lots to keep you thinking about. I really was desperate to get to the end and find out the who and why and I just couldn’t guess, which I love trying to do while reading a book. I ended up downloading Pendulum on audible so I could continue listening during the day when it wasn’t possible to physically read the book. I’ve never actually read and listened to the same book, it’s usually one or the other for me so this was quite a novelty. The narrator Luke Thompson did a very good job and it was easy to listen to. The emotion and fear came over very well in his voice and when I went back to read the book I had his voice in my head.

This really was an intense thriller which I thoroughly enjoyed and I’m looking forward to the next book in the trilogy.

You can purchase a kindle copy of Pendulum here and audible copy here