Reviewing for the
Chicago Tribune in September 1973,
Clarence Page said
Killing Me Softly has a hit title track and "other potential hits, adding up to one of [Flack's] better albums".
John S. Wilson, writing in
The New York Times, felt that Flack and producer
Joel Dorn "have resisted the pitfalls of overproducing that you would suppose such a long gestation period would induce".
Billboard called the record a "delicate, introspective work" by Flack, whom the magazine deemed a "masterful interpreter of clean lyrics fusing a sophisticated
pop sound with that dark side of the
blues".
Robert Christgau was less impressed in a December 1973 column for
Creem, giving
Killing Me Softly a "C" while comparing Flack negatively to
Jesse Colin Young because she also "always makes you wonder whether she's going to fall asleep before you do". In a retrospective review,
The Rolling Stone Album Guide (1992) gave the record two-and-a-half out of five stars and found its music "innocuous".
AllMusic's
Ron Wynn later gave it four and a half stars, writing that the album "continued in the same tradition as
Chapter Two and
Quiet Fire", featuring "simmering ballads, declarative message songs, and better-than-average up-tempo numbers". ==Track listing==