Writing for The Asian Review of Books, Jane Wallace called Savage Tongues "brilliant, erotic and piercing," highlighting how "Van der Vliet Oloomi shines new light into how historical oppression, both at a personal and societal level, continues to dominate our present-day thinking.

[2] Anita Gill, writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books, highlighted this notion: "Arezu’s narration captures the complexity of how a mind learns to cope.

This attention to narrative, executed so diligently, allows the reader to witness a mind carefully excavating buried violence [...] Oloomi’s novel examines trauma in a multifaceted way, her characters displaying a layered complexity and their social relationships revealing rich dimensions".

[3] Also highlighting how Van der Vliet Oloomi addresses trauma in the novel, Tom Mayer, writing for Mountain Times, wrote, "Those who have lived through abuse will find either solace or torment in the pages of this revealing novel.

[4] NPR's Kamil Ahsan provided a mixed review, noting that Savage Tongues "can be moving [...] but it suffers from a sense of repetition and a lack of intrigue.