Prajakta Koli has built a career out of telling stories—first through her relatable sketches on YouTube, then through her acting roles. In February, she took a bold leap into the literary world with her debut romance novel, Too Good To Be True, which has now also been launched as an audiobook. (Also Read: Prajakta Koli cries recalling how her parents had to break her piggybank for money when she was 12 over financial crisis)
In an exclusive conversation with Hindustan Times, Prajakta opened up about her unexpected journey into writing, the inspiration behind her fictional world, and what it felt like to voice her own story for the first time while recording the audiobook for Audible.
Writing in the time of Lockdown
Prajakta revealed that the idea for the book came to her during the pandemic. “I had always enjoyed writing, especially romance,” she shared. “I remember during the lockdown when we had a lot more time on our hands, I wanted to do a lot more long-form content. So I had a couple of ideas that I started developing with the team—saying this could be a movie, or this could be a show. The idea for the book came to me as an eight-part series. At that time, I had a very basic skeleton in mind. I knew my character, how to begin and end, but I didn’t know how to execute it,” she said.
Despite the initial uncertainty, the process flowed naturally. “Since the story was very close to my heart, I thought, let’s not put a writers’ room. Let me see what I can do with it. I started writing little excerpts. And my team was like, ‘This looks a lot like chapters’—and that’s how we went about it. It wasn’t planned at all,” Prajakta added.
At the heart of the story are two characters—Aman and Avni. When asked if she took inspiration for them from people in her real life, she said, “For me, Avni was a very regular girl, and I saw a lot of myself in her. It was much easier to delve into my own personality to give her one. And when it came to Aman, he’s like any other stereotypical main character in a romance novel. I had a lot of fun creating the supporting characters. None of them come from real life—but maybe if I spend some time observing them, I might realise if I leaned on someone from real life. But I don’t think I did.”
From page to audio
As a fan of audiobooks herself, Prajakta knew from the beginning that her book needed to exist in that format. “I’ve actually loved how much you can enjoy a story in audio format,” she said. “Sometimes, when I’m getting ready or travelling, I make sure to download my book on Audible so that I can live that experience. There are stories I’ve heard that made me read them. So when I was writing the book, I knew I had to make it an audio,” Prajakta added.
Prajakta revealed that the transition from page to voice wasn’t entirely seamless—there were tweaks involved. She said, “100% I made changes, because when I was reading my book, I felt a lot of things that are okay to read but sound cringey when you hear them. So I made a few changes here and there in the chapters to make it more palatable when you’re listening.”
And what was it like to finally read it aloud? “The experience was a lot of fun because I was saying all these words out loud for the first time—words I’d been sitting with for so many months,” Prajakta said.
Despite being rooted in the romance genre, the book isn’t autobiographical. “Everything in the story is completely fictional. I kind of expected to pick some anecdotes from my life, but it didn’t really happen. So when I was writing it, I knew what I was doing, and I had to build every instance and every reaction from scratch—because they were all made up,” she explained.
When asked about her family’s response to the book, Prajakta said, “Mumma loved it. Baba is still reading it. My husband read the first 100 pages in 2023, but he hasn’t touched it since. His reaction since last year has been that he’s waiting for the audiobook. So now I’m going to hold him accountable and track his Audible account.”
Impact and dreams of the big screen
What truly touched Prajakta during her book tour were readers’ reactions.“Two things that made me the happiest were when people told me, ‘Your book got us out of our reading slump.’ That was huge for me because I know how frustrating a reading slump can be. And the second was when people told me it was their first book,” she said.
When asked whether she sees her book as a film or series adaptation in the future—and who she’d cast in the lead roles—Prajakta said: “I definitely see the book as a film. I know that I am Avni, but I don’t know about Aman. But we can always check if Henry Cavill is free. I’m open to that. If we’re aspiring, then might as well go all the way.”
