Aliens Adored received critical acclaim, with reviewers praising its analysis and its balanced treatment of the group, as well as its readability for both experts and non-experts.

[11] She discusses the stories and grievances of former members, as well as schisms, including testimony from a former Raëlian, who accused Raël of using money meant to build the group's alien embassy on his race car hobby.

[1] Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, praising it as being a serious academic work but simultaneously "downright fun", noting it as a "rare-full length" assessment of the Raëlians.

They further said that Palmer "treats seriously a religious movement that many do not", due to the perceived strangeness of Raëlian ideology; Publishers Weekly called it a "balanced portrait".

[5][9] A review in the Montreal Gazette argued that Palmer treated them too seriously and did not analyze some of their stranger claims, but described the book as having "all the makings of a TV movie".

[4] Von Heyking described Palmer's perspective as shifting throughout the book, at first viewing Raël positively as a prophet and artist, then critical and skeptical later on after uncovering his fraudulent actions.

He noted that it was "difficult to determine" if Palmer had genuinely became more critical in the process of writing the book, or if she had just been attempting to appear uncritical so she could have access to the group (an alternative possibility being that the initial "open-mindedness" was merely an expression of "the existential boredom of a sociologist" dabbling in "exotic secondary realities").

[6][7] The Montreal Gazette said the work of both Palmer and her students was "lively and engaging",[4] though James T. Richardson described it as easy to read but said that it was written in a "casual, even partially tongue-in-cheek" manner that might be off-putting to some readers.