[6] The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the album gold on August 27, 1973, and double platinum on January 30, 2006, denoting shipments of two million copies in the United States.

[10] 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".

[4] 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".

[1] 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".

[12] 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".