You’re sitting there with a bowl of popcorn, ready to dive into the sweeping vistas of the 19th-century West, but then it hits you. There are like... eight of these movies. Or is it eleven? If you try to follow the love comes softly order based purely on when the movies were released, you are going to be very, very frustrated.
Seriously.
The timeline is a total mess if you go by air dates. One year you're watching Marty Claridge grapple with being a widow in the 1800s, and the next, Hallmark drops a prequel that jumps back decades to show her husband as a kid. It's enough to make you want to give up and just watch reruns of Little House on the Prairie.
But don’t do that. Janette Oke’s world is worth the effort, provided you actually know where to start and where the story is headed.
The Chronological Timeline: Watching the Story Grow
Most fans agree that watching in the order the events actually happened is the "correct" way to do it. It feels more like a cohesive family history. You start with the roots and end with the branches.
First up, you have to ignore the "original" movie for a second and go back to the beginning with Love Begins (2011). This is a prequel. It focuses on Ellen Barlow and a young Clark Davis. It’s weird seeing different actors, sure, but it sets the stage for Clark’s character—the man who eventually becomes the patriarch we all know and love. After that comes Love’s Everlasting Courage, which continues that early story.
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Then, and only then, do you get to the one that started the whole craze: Love Comes Softly (2003).
This is the Michael Landon Jr. directed masterpiece that put Katherine Heigl on the map for many people before her Grey’s Anatomy days. It’s raw. It’s about a woman, Marty, who loses her husband on the first day they arrive at their new homestead. She’s pregnant, alone, and desperate. Clark Davis offers her a "marriage of convenience" so she can survive the winter and his daughter, Missie, can have a mother figure.
It sounds like a Hallmark trope because, well, this movie basically invented the modern version of that trope.
Moving Into the Second Generation
Once Marty and Clark have their footing, the love comes softly order shifts its gaze toward Missie. This is where the series gets its legs. You move into Love’s Enduring Promise, then Love’s Long Journey, and Love’s Abiding Joy.
By this point, the story has moved from the lonely plains to the rugged frontier and even into the beginnings of more established Western towns. You see Missie grow from a precocious kid played by Skye McCole Bartusiak to a woman played by Erin Cottrell.
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It’s honestly kind of rare to see a film series commit to a single family’s lineage over this many installments without a massive theatrical budget. Hallmark found a goldmine here. They realized people didn’t just want a romance; they wanted a legacy.
- Love’s Unending Legacy – Missie is now a widow herself. Talk about full circle.
- Love’s Unfolding Dream – This focuses on Belinda, Missie’s adopted daughter, who wants to be a doctor. It’s a bit more "modern" in its sensibilities for the time period.
- Love Takes Wing and Love Finds a Home – These round out the Belinda arc.
Why the Release Dates Will Ruin Your Life
If you decide to be a rebel and watch them in the order they were televised, you’re going to experience massive whiplash. The first eight movies came out between 2003 and 2009. They followed a pretty linear path. But then, in 2011, Hallmark decided they weren't done and released the prequels.
If you watch movie #8 (Love Finds a Home) and then immediately jump into movie #9 (Love Begins), you are jumping back about 50 years in the story.
It’s jarring. The production quality changes. The actors are obviously different. The "vibe" is more 2011-polished than 2003-gritty. Honestly, unless you have a photographic memory for the Davis family tree, you’ll spend half the movie trying to figure out how these people are related to the characters you just spent ten hours watching.
Comparing the Books to the Movies
We have to talk about Janette Oke for a second. She is the "Godmother of Christian Romance," and her books are... different.
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In the books, the timeline is much tighter, and the religious elements are way more front-and-center. The movies softened (no pun intended) some of the harder theological edges to make them appeal to a broader audience. Also, the movies aged up the characters significantly. In the book Love Comes Softly, Marty is basically a teenager. In the movie, Katherine Heigl plays her with a maturity that fits a woman in her early twenties.
There are also characters in the films that don't exist in the books, and entire plotlines—like the medical career of Belinda—that were expanded heavily for TV. If you’re a purist, the love comes softly order in print is only eight books long. The movies stretched that into eleven.
The Often Forgotten "Christmas" Prequel
Just when you think you’ve got the list settled, Love’s Christmas Journey (2011) enters the room. This one is a bit of an outlier. It’s technically a prequel/side-story involving Clark’s daughter Ellie.
Most people leave this for the very end as a "bonus" or watch it during the holidays. It doesn't strictly follow the tight narrative of the first few films, but if you're a completionist, you can't skip it. It features Natalie Hall and even has a cameo from Sean Astin. Yeah, Samwise Gamgee is in the Davis family universe. Sorta.
Practical Steps for Your Next Binge Watch
Don't just wing it. If you want the most emotional impact, follow the narrative flow.
- Start with the Prequels: Watch Love Begins and Love’s Everlasting Courage. It makes Clark’s eventual wisdom in the later films feel earned because you saw him as a headstrong young man.
- The Core Marty & Clark Era: This is the heart of the series. Love Comes Softly and Love’s Enduring Promise. If you only watch two, make it these.
- The Missie Years: Watch the middle four movies as a block. This is where the "Western" elements really ramp up—wagon trains, gold mines, and frontier justice.
- The Belinda Finale: Finish with the final two movies. By now, you’ve seen four generations of the family.
- Check Streaming Rights: These movies bounce around. Currently, Hallmark Movies Now is the most reliable source, but UP Faith & Family often carries them too. You can usually find the 20-movie "Legacy Collection" DVD sets at thrift stores or on Amazon if you want to go old school.
The real magic of the love comes softly order isn't just about the romance. It's about watching how a single family's faith and grit shape the landscape of the American West. It's slow. It's sometimes cheesy. But man, it's consistent.
If you’re ready to start, grab Love Begins first. Seeing the origin of Clark Davis's faith actually makes his interaction with Marty in the "original" movie much more poignant. You realize he isn't just a nice guy; he's a man who has been through the fire himself.