"Raptor Red" was favorably received by critics and the mainstream press. Much praise was given to Bakker's anthropomorphizing of the dinosaurs; a reviewer for the "Toronto Star" said that ""Raptor Red" does for dinosaurs what some nature writing does for creatures alive today: it turns data into stories. And stories are what all of us need to make these animals—even dinosaurs—come alive." Mark Nichols of "Maclean's" said that Bakker's success lay in making the reader hope that the dinosaurs were indeed creatures as Bakker portrayed. James Gorman, writing for "Natural History", compared Bakker's heroine to a "bloody-minded Jane Austen character—bound by family ties, thoroughly responsible, yet longing for independence and love." A review in "The Psychological Record" recommended the book as a "conceptually-rich and controversial" explanation for dinosaur behavior.