All 11 Janette Oke: ‘Love Comes Softly’ Movies in Order
Janette Oke is a phenomenal Canadian author best known for her Love Comes Softly series. She wrote inspirational fiction drama, mostly revolving around romantic plots and her main character, Love.
The books were incredibly successful, so it’s no wonder that they were turned into a movie series – and a long series it is. If you enjoy inspirational, romantic drama, brace yourselves because this is the perfect movie series for you! Here’s the entire list of Janette Oke’s Love comes softly movies in the right order.
How many ‘Love Comes Softly’ movies are there?
There are eleven – yes, eleven – Love Comes Softly movies ever made. The first one – with the titular name Love Comes Softly – came out back in 2003, while the final entry of the series, Love’s Everlasting Courage, came out in 2011.
‘Love Comes Softly’ movies in order (at a glance)
Love Comes Softly is actually quite a long series of eleven movies, spanning almost a decade of production between 2003 and 2011. The movies came out in this particular order:
- Love Comes Softly (2003)
- Love’s Enduring Promise (2004)
- Love’s Long Journey (2005)
- Love’s Abiding Joy (2006)
- Love’s Unending Legacy (2007)
- Love’s Unfolding Dream (2007)
- Love Takes Wing (2009)
- Love Finds a Home (2009)
- Love’s Christmas Journey (2011)
- Love Begins (2011)
- Love’s Everlasting Courage (2011)
Katherine Heigl (Grey’s Anatomy, Knocked Up) starred in the first few Love Comes Softly as the titular character, Marty Claridge. Those first few movies garnered the most success, but additional sequels were good enough for the producers to keep making more films for Janette Oke and Love Comes Softly fans.
Are ‘Love Comes Softly’ movies connected?
Love Comes Softly movies are all connected through plot points, scenery, characters, and more. Even though we have some prequels and characters changing throughout the series, all the movies follow the same group of people, their relatives, kids, etc. Therefore, it’s important to watch the movies in a particular order so as not to miss certain plot points and references.
What is the best way to watch ‘Love Comes Softly’ movies?
The only right way to watch the Love Comes Softly movies is in the order of their release. Throughout the series, you will notice that not all the movies are chronological – there are some prequels, sequels, etc. – but the series was designed to give you bits and pieces of information in each film, so it’s best to follow the release order to experience the story as it was designed.
Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t some complex story that’ll have you scratching your head. However, if you want the best experience, the best way to watch Love Comes Softly is by release date.
‘Love Comes Softly’ movies in order (by release date)
Love Comes Softly (2003)
IMDb rating: 7.2/10
What it’s about: Marty and Aaron Claridge are a happy couple, expecting a child soon in the 1800s. However, Aaron dies in an accident on a wagon trail heading West. Marty is left alone, pregnant, and unsafe, so she marries a widower named Clark Davis out of mutual benefit. He pays her and protects her while she tutors his daughter, Missie.
What started as a family of needs and benefits slowly but surely became a family of love and compassion. Marty will let herself feel love again.
Love’s Enduring Promise (2004)
IMDb rating: 7.0/10
What it’s about: Missie is now an older girl, and the tight-knit family is still together. However, things take a turn for the worse when Clark gets injured with an axe. Luckily, a young man helps him not to bleed out to death and takes him home, offering to help around the farm until Clark recovers.
Davis gladly accepts and thanks the stranger – Nate – for his kindness, giving him a full-time farm-keeping job. However, young Missie soon falls for the young man, and as the family learns more about Nate, they realize he might not be a stranger as they initially believed.
Love’s Long Journey (2005)
IMDb rating: 7.1/10
What it’s about: Nate’s out of the picture, and Missie has a new husband, Willie. She gets pregnant by surprise, and the happy couple decides to take the wagon trail out west to find a life of their own. However, Missie soon realizes how much she misses her family and worries she might never see them again. Will the couple find a happy new home?
Love’s Abiding Joy (2006)
IMDb rating: 6.8/10
What it’s about: Missie and Willie are living a great life – even more so after her father, Clark, arrives home from a trip out East. However, a huge rift tears the family apart after the couple loses a baby, and Misse falls into a deep depression.
Willie takes a sheriff’s job just to get away from the house, but it proves even worse, as his job is mainly evicting the people he knows from their homes due to them not being able to repay the loans to a corrupt Mayor. Meanwhile, Willie’s son and the Mayor’s daughter fall in love…
Love’s Unending Legacy (2007)
IMDb rating: 6.9/10
What it’s about: Missie’s unfortunate fate turns from bad to worse after Willie is killed during a poker game dispute. She’s left alone with the children, with nobody else on the West Coast. So, she decides to go back East to be closer to her parents, and just like Marty in the first film, she finds a new job being a teacher.
It doesn’t help her depression, though, until she meets Belinda – an orphaned girl in desperate need of help. They actually help each other, and Missie adopts Belinda and raises her and her biological daughter together. Suddenly, love finds a way back into her life as she falls for the town’s sheriff, Zach…
Love’s Unfolding Dream (2007)
IMDb rating: 6.9/10
What it’s about: Missie and Zach raise Belinda together, and the young girl dreams of going to medical school. However, the family can’t afford to send her there, so she takes a nursing job with a man named Micah Jackson to make her dreams come true.
At the same time, we meet the Kents – who are both illiterate, so they take jobs where they learn to read so that they can educate their foster child, Caleb, and adopt him before his criminal father comes out of jail to take him away and make a criminal out of him.
Love Takes Wing (2009)
IMDb rating: 6.6/10
What it’s about: Belinda is all grown up, but just like Missie and Marty before her, she lost her husband to a premature tragic death. She moves to Missouri to start a new life as a doctor, but the small-town folks don’t enjoy her being there, not believing a woman could be a good doctor.
An infection breaks out from a local orphanage, and Belinda soon proves her worth and skill to everyone in town as she tackles the breakout single-handedly, while, again, just like Missie and Marty before her, she allows herself to fall in love again.
Love Finds a Home (2009)
IMDb rating: 6.7/10
What it’s about: Belinda finds out she can’t get pregnant, causing a strain on her relationship with her new husband. Meanwhile, she welcomes her pregnant friend and her traditional mother-in-law Mary into her home. Mary believes in natural, holistic medicine, while Belinda is science-oriented, so they butt heads quite a lot.
Also, Belinda’s adopted daughter, Lillian, falls in love and gets her heart broken for the first time. Only after Belinda accepts a few pieces of advice from Mary does she finally get her life in order. Despite their differences, they find a common tongue – and Belinda finally reveals that she got pregnant.
Love’s Christmas Journey (2011)
IMDb rating: 6.3/10
What it’s about: Ellie King is left alone after her husband and daughter tragically passed away. Alone and depressed, she visits her brother and his kids for Christmas, not to be alone. Although not in the mood to celebrate, Ellie slowly gets better as she meets new people – including a charming guy she just might fall for.
However, after her brother Aaron leaves to buy new land and leaves Ellie to look after the kids, things take a sour turn because nobody can find Aaron…
Love Begins (2011)
IMDb rating: 6.8/10
What it’s about: Clark Davis is a wild, free spirit with a desire to travel the world. His plans vanish quickly, as he’s threatened with a big jail sentence after getting into a fight and completely trashing a bar where it had happened.
Clark takes a plea deal, so instead of jail, he works full-time as a farm hand for the Barlow sisters. Soon, Clark might realize he doesn’t want to leave so quickly at all. Perhaps love has something to do with that…
Love’s Everlasting Courage (2011)
IMDb rating: 6.8/10
What it’s about: A family’s financial struggles come to an end when the wife finds a well-paid job as a seamstress. However, their happiness is short-lived, as the wife falls ill and dies very quickly. The unemployed father does everything in his power to keep his family together and well-fed but struggles more and more to do so.
Luckily, his parents manage to help, new loves emerge, and he ultimately manages to save everything he and his wife have achieved and accomplished together…
Where to watch ‘Love Comes Softly’ movies?
Love Comes Softly is actually available all over the internet. In fact, all eleven movies are available on YouTube. If you want a higher quality, though, you can find the series on DIRECTV and Amazon Prime Video. You can also rent/buy the films on Google, AppleTV+, or stream on Roku.
Will there be more ‘Love Comes Softly’ movies?
Seeing that the last Love Comes Softly film came out in 2011, and there haven’t been any updates ever since, it’s highly unlikely that there will be more Love Comes Softly movies in the future. However, we’re living in a culture of remakes and reboots, so who knows? Perhaps the story gets a new twist, and we will see a new Love Comes Softly movie somewhere in the future.