Sapp wrote that even the book's title would be regarded as "inflammatory". He believed that the authors' theories had a biological aspect worth considering, but also a questionable ideological aspect. He criticized Thornhill and Palmer's proposals for rape prevention as potentially offensive and predicted that A Natural History of Rape could generate as much controversy as the psychologist Richard Herrnstein and the political scientist Charles Murray's "infamous" The Bell Curve (1994). Pigliucci observed that the book was controversial due to both its subject matter and the controversial status of evolutionary psychology itself. He considered the basic features of Thornhill and Palmer's argument reasonable, and rejected the suggestion that their view that rape is either an adaptation or a by-product is trivial. However, he believed that they were mistaken to reject entirely the idea that rape is motivated by a desire for "violence and domination", arguing that it was more likely that it and sexual urges played an important role. He noted that rape victims include very young or old individuals or persons of the same sex, and argued that a "social-psychological explanation" better explained such cases. He also argued that Thornhill and Palmer ignored the fact that selection was not the only evolutionary force that could potentially influence culture and provided insufficient discussion of rape among non-human animals.
