Early reviews of the book acknowledged its potential for popular success while at the same time praising Puzo for his understanding of the Mafia culture. Pete Axthelm wrote in Newsweek,

This is a big, turbulent, highly entertaining novel with
ingredients that should assure its place on the bestseller
lists: ample sex, a veritable orgy of bloodshed
in many exotic forms, and several characters titillatingly
reminiscent of real-life public figures.

In the Nation, Fred J. Cook called it a "brawling, irresistible tale" that "brings the reality [of Mafia life] home more vividly and realistically than the drier stuff of fact ever can." Cook went on to write that the book's "sexual scenes, plots and counterplots, murder and gore . . . might have made it a work of cheap sensationalism, but The Godfather is deeply embedded in reality, and this sense of reality pervades the torrent of unending action."

As...